They are more like raising the level of the job market - no matter what the type of job is or how technically demanding it is, a master's degree is the minimum requirement, and this has become a pass to the workplace.

Written by Qingliu

Recently, a piece of news has attracted considerable attention: On July 31, the Office of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council issued the "Public Notice of Expert Verification and Evaluation Results of Newly Added Doctoral and Master's Degree Authorizations", which added a total of 831 doctoral degree authorization points and 1,924 master's degree authorization points.

What is the concept of this?

Previously, there were 18,442 authorized master and doctoral programs nationwide (to be announced in 2022), which means thatThis time there was a one-time increase of 15%; and among the newly added master's and doctoral programs, master's programs accounted for 75%.

Some media have sorted out the schools that have newly added master's degree programs and said that the word "college" is everywhere - this statement is of course inaccurate, but some clues can be found from some statistics.

For example, Huaiyin Normal University has the largest number of new master's programs, with a total of 15. Next, Dalian Minzu University, Taizhou University and Nanjing Institute of Technology each plan to add 14 new master's programs, and their pass rates are all 100%.It can be seen from the statistical table that most of the schools with higher pass rates are not top-notch universities.

In people's impression, there are already quite a few masters in society. The job hunting field is full of masters, and university dormitories are not enough to accommodate them. With so many more master's programs, will the future usher in an era of "master's degree per capita"?

Even more, to apply what people say about one-year master's programs abroad, will the future be an era of "average master's degrees per capita"?

01

Are there many graduate students?

According to the China Statistical Yearbook 2023, the proportion of people aged 6 and above with a postgraduate education level is 0.95%.

From this perspective, it is not a lot. But if you filter the data, you will immediately get a different impression. For example, in Beijing, this proportion reached 9.01%, and in Shanghai it reached 5.4%. In 2023, the number of master's and doctoral graduates in Beijing will even exceed the number of undergraduate graduates.

This is normal. As we all know, the concentration of colleges and universities varies greatly, and it is normal for colleges and universities and talents to be concentrated in a few regions.

Take Hangzhou as an example. According to data released by the Zhejiang Provincial Bureau of Statistics last year, Hangzhou accounts for 18.76% of the province's employed population, but has 34.22% of the province's employed population with bachelor's degrees, 56.98% with master's degrees, and 65.42% with doctoral degrees.

This is why people feel that there are many masters and doctors, because they are all concentrated in a few schools and a few places.

Then we can also understand the new ideas of this master's and doctoral program:A large number of schools outside first-tier cities have begun to add new master's programs, which in fact has the intention of balancing the distribution of academic qualifications.

Of course, this is only an ideal situation. It is hard to imagine that a master's degree in artificial intelligence application technology will have a wide range of job options. Most likely, he will still end up in a few cities.

So, if everyone already feels that there are "too many graduate students", then I'm afraid the situation will only get worse in the future.

02

In fact, from a personal perspective, it is certainly good to have more opportunities to study for a master's or doctoral degree. Longer years of education will definitely bring higher qualities and broader perspectives.

For universities, it is certainly good to have more master's and doctoral programs, which will definitely improve the level and quality of the school.

Moreover, the large number of masters and doctors is not necessarily a problem. If all masters of finance go to securities companies, masters of automation go to car companies, and masters of law go to law firms, people will not think that the large number of masters is a problem. On the contrary, it is a good thing, at least the overall quality of practitioners has improved.

But the problem now is that the mismatch of human resources is becoming more and more obvious.

In 2021, a cigarette factory in a central province released an admission list. Among the 135 people admitted to "front-line production operation positions", there were graduates from well-known universities such as Renmin University of China, Wuhan University, and Zhengzhou University. Among them, 41 had master's degrees, accounting for 30% of the total number of admissions.

In addition, news such as a Stanford PhD applying for a township civil servant, a Tokyo University master's degree graduate joining a street office, a 211 university master's degree graduate working as a cleaner in a hot pot restaurant, a Zhejiang University graduate working as a bird scarer at the airport, a business administration graduate from Royal Holloway, University of London applying for an ordinary security inspector, and the requirement for security guards to have a "master's degree" are all very eye-catching.

Of course, some people would say that it is also good for a young person with "better quality, higher education, more comprehensive vision and fuller personality" to "roll" cigarettes.

But is it possible that this job does not require postgraduate study, and the extra years of study he spends are completely ineffective and inefficient investments in the workplace?

This may be the reason why people feel that there are "too many graduate students". They cannot find jobs that match their majors well. It seems that they have raised the level of the job market - no matter what kind of job or what the technical content is, they have to start with a master's degree, which has become a pass to the workplace.

Therefore, another phenomenon has emerged in recent years, that is, people actively give up higher education and embrace stability.For example, this year many high-scoring candidates chose to apply for the early admission batch, including public-funded teacher students, targeted trainee students, and police academies, which also made it to many hot searches.

This does not mean that they are "short-sighted", they may just be more cost-conscious: instead of taking a chance with a higher degree, it is better to save time and financial costs and "enroll with an enrollment."

It is conceivable that now a large number of schools have added master's and doctoral programs, which makes it easier for students, at least from the perspective of "having a school to go to". In 2024, the number of candidates for postgraduate entrance examinations will be 4.38 million, and the admission ratio is about 20%, which is already very high compared to civil service examinations, and I am afraid it will rise further in the future.

Therefore, seeing the addition of new master's and doctoral programs may make many people feel uncomfortable - the increase may not be in professional talents such as engineers, but in job seekers who are sending out resumes everywhere. I am afraid that "academic inflation" will continue to intensify in the future.

03

In fact, in addition to the addition of new master's and doctoral programs, people can also see a trend - extending the study period.

For example, in the past, many master's programs, especially professional master's programs, were trained for two years, while master's programs were trained for three years. Now, many schools have begun to specify that the master's program is three years and the doctoral program is four years.

According to media statistics, Southeast University, Central South University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Nanjing Normal University, Shanghai Sport University and others have introduced similar measures, and the media therefore judged that "the extension of graduate study has gradually become the norm."

Comparing this with the news about the new master's and doctoral programs, people seem to have heard some hidden meaning:Is this treating the school as a reservoir to offset employment pressure?

Of course, this is just a guess. From the perspective of the laws of education itself, it is certainly beneficial for schools to improve the level and quality of training.

But there is still an inevitable problem: if the intuitive economic returns of education become increasingly unclear, this may lead to a huge waste of resources.

For example, the time and money mentioned above. Not to mention tuition fees, some students have to pay for living expenses for taking the second or third exam and preparing for the postgraduate entrance examination, the tuition fees for various cram schools, and even the rent they have to pay because the school dormitory is full.

Under the current demographic situation, these young people in their 20s, who are in their prime, not only cannot earn money, but also have to invest increasingly high amounts of money, which actually adds up to a huge social cost.

The invisible sense of mental frustration is also a social cost.In any case, a young person who has studied for a master's degree is bound to be a Kong Yiji. During this stage of education, he will definitely learn a lot of useless "dragon-slaying skills", such as abstract thinking, law summary, and paper writing. This is determined by the characteristics of graduate education itself.

If many people can only find some simple physical and repetitive jobs in the end, this will definitely bring about a huge gap and discomfort, as well as the overall self-dwarfing and lack of vitality of young people.

This is also why, on the one hand, society has long known that academic qualifications are devalued, but on the other hand, it is still saddened by news such as "Master's degree holders working as cleaners" -People understand that there must be mismatch and waste, and they also know that this is not normal.

Moreover, it is hard to say that the establishment of more master's and doctoral programs can reduce the difficulty of getting a job. Just like it is not difficult to get a bachelor's degree now, but the college entrance examination is still very competitive because there are only a limited number of good schools.

Therefore, having more application options does not necessarily mean more "shores" to reach, but rather pushes the "shore" farther away - you have to swim farther and longer to reach the dream school that truly brings you employment advantages, rather than just having a degree.

I am afraid that the problem of education cannot be solved only from the perspective of education itself. Whether there are too many graduate students is actually a difficult question to answer, as the number is ultimately a relative concept.

It doesn’t matter if there are too many graduate students, as long as there are enough positions that match their majors.Therefore, the key issue is to activate the market, upgrade the industry, and create knowledge-intensive jobs.

Ultimately, as long as the returns to education are satisfactory, people will not feel that "studying for a master's degree is a loss", and society will not feel that "there are too many graduate students".