Top Biz News

Business studies a 'major' problem

By Zhao Ziran (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-07-24 08:28

When Xu Wenjing entered Xi'an International Studies University to study international trade, she thought she was lucky. But when she left college in 2001, she could not get a satisfactory job offer that matched her major and started a career as an English teacher.

"Companies only recruit people with experience," Xu said. "A new college graduate can hardly be part of that game."

The strange phenomenon is that though parents know there are not enough jobs for business graduates, they still push their children into those majors.

In another survey on the same website that asked 91,882 college students about their majors, economics came in second behind Chinese, while business administration was third.

"Nowadays, most people are very pragmatic, said Yin Bihui, a teacher at the Beijing Foreign Language (middle) School.  "The whole society around them is focusing on developing the economy, so most university students are thinking about how to make more money."

But now the impractical choices are causing some embarrassment, educators say.
Xiong Bingqi, a professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, told China Youth Daily:

"Many pick the ones that, at first glance, are popular ones. What they don't realize is that social needs determine whether a major is useful or not."

Zhuang Youming, head of the admission office at Jinan University in Guangzhou told Guangzhou Daily that some students and their parents were "chasing majors like fans chasing pop music stars."

Another problem is that the universities teaching the "hot" majors are sacrificing quality for quantity, said Xiong, and "the quality of the large number of graduates has been falling short of the market's needs."