The Study Of Chinese College Students Over-education

The phenomenon of over-education is universal in the world,the developed countries like United States and Europe had ever come across with over-education,so do as developing countries like India.The concept of over-education is first proposed by the American scholar Freeman in 1976,he observed the income gap between American college graduates and high school graduates was sharply narrowing in 1970s,and more and more college students took in the job which was lower than their education levels.Ever since over-education has aroused extensive concern and research by economists and educators,and they proposed that over-education in developing countries is more common as College Students' unemployment.On the concern of promoting domestic demand and consumption and easing the employment pressure,the Chinese government put forward the college expansion plan in 1998,and in 1999<facing the 21st education revitalization action plan>was come out.Since then China's higher education was changing from elite education to mass education,the enrollment of colleges and universities increased rapidly,and entrance rate of higher education reached to 17%in 2003 which was ahead of schedule for 7 years.The number of college graduates had risen from 1010 thousands in 1999 to 7490 thousand in 2015,the compound annual growth rate is 13.34%which is far more than the growth rate of the economy.Under the background of college expansion,our college students'over-education is becoming increasingly apparent,In the labor market the upgrading phenomenon of "crowding out effect" and " highly educated consumption" the decreased educational return-ratio and the college students' difficult employment.It is important to study over-education,because it will not only weak the role of education in economic growth and have a negative impact on labor productivity,but also it will make employees' job satisfaction decreased which has bad affect on labor productivity,and then damage the economic benefits of enterprise and society,at the meanwhile over-education will also affect people's enthusiasm for education investment and is not conducive to social stability.Therefore this research is focus on the study of university graduates' over-education,we will take on three dimensions respectively to study the specific performance of our college students' over-education,which include the incidence and return-rate of over-education and unemployment,and analyze some policy causes,then try to puts forward some suggestions on improving and optimizing the related policies which can be helpful to alleviate or solve over-education and improve the quality of College Students' employment.The study consists of three parts,including the review of over-education,measure on over-education,policy cause and suggestion,the main research methods and contents are as follows:The first part is over-education review.Firstly,explain the definition and connotation of over-education,and the three dimensions of it;Secondly,review the research literature on the formation mechanism of over-education,which include the classical and new classical theories,human capital theory,the educational signal theory,competition theory,job matching theory,and the theory of technological change and difference in educational quality,that will help to provide a theoretical basis for our study;Thirdly,review the empirical research on over-education which contains measurement method of over-education incidence and its return-rate.This part focuses on presenting the current research on over-education which provides a theoretical and empirical basis for our study.The second part is the measurement on ever-education.We measure over-education incidence,its return-rate and the college students' unemployment rate and scale.We adopt the standard deviation method and mode method to calculate over-education incidence and the survey data came from the research group of Professor Kangsi Zhang.Using independent samples T test to analyze the difference of over-education incidence among individual characteristic,corporate ownership and industry.And we further constructing a logistic model to analyze the main influencing factors of over education incidence and their mechanism;Over-educational return-rate,we also use independent samples T test to analyze the difference of income level among individual characteristic,corporate ownership and industry.At the same time,we estimate the over-educational return-rate by constructing ORU model and Verdugo-Verdugo model.In addition,We use the initial employment rate of college graduates coming from the Ministry of education and<college students' employment report>coming from Mycos institute to analyze the unemployment rate and scale of college students,and we analyze the effect of the total economic growth on the employment of College students based on the Okun model.Further more,we use the relative data coming from Ministry of human resources and social security to analyze college students' supply and demand situation in labor market.The third part is policy reason and suggestion on over-education.We mainly take three levels on analyzing the policy impact on over-education.They are Chinese employment system,industry development policy and enterprise's selection standard and salary incentive.We use the comparative labor productivity indicator to analyze the harmony with industrial structure and college students' employment structure.And we use Mincer wage equation to reflect enterprise's selection standard and salary incentive.At last,combined with the performance of over-education and its institutional causes we put forward some relevant policy recommendations.The empirical results indicates that there exist the phenomenon of over-education in China's large and medium-sized city,and by comparing before and after the two survey data the workers' educational level is generally increased,for which the theory of the educational signal and work competition show stronger explanation;At the same time,the labor market segmentation,enterprise ownership segmentation and gender discrimination make the phenomenon of over-education to be more prominent,which confirms the applicability of the theory of work in China.The details are as follows:First,the phenomenon of over-education exists in China's large and medium-sized city.(1)Our sample shows that over-education incidence is more than 15%in 2014,and it is larger with the workers' educational level increased,and by comparing before and after the two survey data we found the workers' educational level is generally increased.(2)On over-educational return-rate,the regression results of ORU model and Verdguo-Verdugo model show that the over-education return-rate is negative,i.e.Workers' income levels who are overeducated was significantly lower than that who are moderate educated.(3)On the unemployment rate and scale,the employment of college students is difficult,and in recent years under the pressure of employment the ratio of choosing to entrepreneur and further study is increasing,while proportion of full-time employment is declining,Fresh university graduates accounted for about 50%among new growth unemployed youth on in the labor market,the scale is up to more than 500 thousand people.Second,there exist enterprise ownership and industry segmentation on over-education.The over-education incidence in private and collective enterprises is significantly lower than that of the state-owned enterprises,and the over-education incidence in government departments,public institutions and foreign-funded enterprises has no significant difference with state-owned enterprises.And compared with the industry of relatively high marketization,such as manufacturing,construction industry,retail industry and IT industry,the over-education incidence in industry which are stringently controlled by government is higher,including scientific and technical services,financial industry,electricity,heat,gas and water production and supply industry,public management service industry,real estate industry,education industry,transportation,storage and postal industry.Third,the existence of gender discrimination makes schoolgirls more likely to be overeducated.Both the educational return-rate and college students' job search reflect the female college student over-education.The regression results of ORU model,Verdguo-Verdugo model and Mincer wage equation all indicate the income level of female college students was significantly lower than that of men,and this phenomenon exists in both domestic and foreign companies.At the same time,in the job search process of female college students suffered severe gender discrimination,they suffer more employment search and fewer opportunities.Fourth,unreasonable industrial economic structure contributes to over-education.Our experience analysis based on Okun's law shows that China's overall economic growth does not improve the university graduates'employment.Further analysis found that the imbalance of industrial structure leads to college students' abnormal distribution which leads to the phenomenon of over education.With respect to their position in the national economy,the absorb ability of the first and second industry on college students is weak.The tertiary industry is the main areas of employment for university students,distribution inside the industry is imbalance,the social service which is less related with produce absorb too many college students,while production services and circulation service which are more related with production absorb less.Fifth,employers' recruitment requirements for job seekers and their wage incentive reflect their academic preference,which will urge the workers to continuously add their own educational investment,resulting in over-education.Most enterprises often take educational level as a threshold,and they offer higher wage incentives on employees'educational level and pay less for hands-on background,that is more apparent in the state-owned enterprise.Based on the above five conclusions,we proposes three policy recommendations:(1)We should change the mode of economic development and optimize the industrial structure,China's extensive economic development mode is arising from fiscal decentralization and local officials incentive mechanism,Therefore,we should put forward to establish a scientific performance evaluation index under the current decentralization and reform of the tax system,make property rights and powers of local government to be balance.Or abolishing the decentralized mode,to establish the western public finance system and reform the household registration system and land system,Make "vote by hand" and "vote by foot" mechanism to be effective.On the industrial development policy,We should accelerate the process of industrialization,increase the technical level of production,develop production service,and then adjust the employment structure of college students,make the college students' employment field gradually convert from social service industry to industrial and production services;(2)Strengthen institutional reform,promote economic marketization.To eliminate entry and exit barriers in the monopoly industry and welcome the entry of private capital and foreign capital,let market to play a fundamental role in resources allocation.Promote the reform of the financial system,to abolish the intervention of the government on bank interest rates and credit delivery,accelerate to develop direct financing mode in the open market.The government should provide a stable public policy environment on tax policy,regulatory policy,system reform trend and the future economic development strategy and improve the corporate governance of state-owned enterprises;(3)To follow the Japanese model,our higher education should take a forward-looking development,which is based on the demand of the labor market and take the premise of industrial structure adjustment and technological development,make sure that the students can meet the needs of social and economic development.The contributions of this study are mainly on three points:First,the current research literature about over-education in China mainly concentrated on over-education incidence and return-rate,while Coombs(2000)and Maynard and Feldman(2011)pointed out that in developing countries the over-education is more likely to be an unemployment phenomenon.Based on this research we take unemployment into account and propose a research framework for the analysis of over-education.Second,on the analysis of college students' unemployment,we attempt to construct econometric model of College Students' employment rate and economic growth.At present the research on the relationship between economic growth and employment of college students are mostly qualitative or simple data description,there are no modeling analysis.In this research,we base on Okun's model to study the relationship between economic growth and employment of college students,make quantitative analysis economic growth and College Students Employment ever since College expansion;Third,we make a comprehensive analysis of policy influence on College Students'over-education.We analyze the employment system,industrial policy and enterprise incentives and put forward to further optimize and improve the proposal which can be effectively solve the students of over-education problems.