China's overqualified youth taking jobs as drivers, labourers and film extras
China's overqualified youth taking jobs as drivers, labourers and film extras
www.bbc.com
China's young workers - overqualified and in low-paying jobs
China is now a country where a high-school handyman has a master's degree in physics; a cleaner is qualified in environmental planning; a delivery driver studied philosophy, and a PhD graduate from the prestigious Tsinghua University ends up applying to work as an auxiliary police officer.
These are real cases in a struggling economy - and it is not hard to find more like them.
I don't know that this is a bad thing, firstly the people themselves have richer intellectual lives because of it. Society is similarly enriched by extension and the country has a reserve pool of highly educated people it can draw upon as needed. There are only so many academic jobs available at any time but providing for and allowing everyone access to higher education is utopian and to be commended. It shows good planning for an ever more technical world.
Was coming to say this.
It's a very... anglo conservative view to see education as a financial investment to get a job (and a working class person with an education as a waste of resources).
There's an argument to be made about the labor market in China and how its working class is remunerated in an economy designed for cheap exports, but this framing is probably not it.
So you're trying to tell me that the Chinese don't see education as a financial investment and they just do it because it's cool?
This was never about academic jobs vs non-academic jobs. Yes it's true there's only so many academic positions for people with higher education, but those people with higher education should be working in high economic value positions where their level of education is actually of use. For example these people with higher education degrees in science and engineering should be working in an R&D team of an industry leading company, instead of working as a delivery driver, film crowd, or a fricking police axillary which anyone without the education background could perfectly do.
This is not what happening because there is no available positions in any industry leading company's R&D team because such companies cannot afford expanding their advanced level work force. There is a tremendous lack of social economical resources aka employment opportunities, not only this is a real sign of a struggling economy, but this is also extremely detrimental to the country and its economy as a whole, because a de fecto surplus of people with higher education degree devalues such qualifications, and make it even more difficult for people with such qualifications to find career opportunities where their qualification can be used for creating value, even if such social economical resources does come to existences, this leads to a repeating cycle that keeps getting worse.
I think that if there are indeed fewer industry research opportunities in China than in equivalent Western conditions it is likely due to the very rapid advance of these areas in China and consequent current lack of legacy infrastructure rather than due to a struggling economy. I like very much the idea of police officers with unrelated doctorates, science clubs in factories and plumbers arguing about the Fermi paradox over lunch. I think society would be far better for it and it is impossible to gauge the great value of wide and seemingly off topic experience, individually or in communities.