Education must address needs of society

With a record 6.99 million graduates entering the job market this year, greater efforts should be made to improve the quality of higher education, says an article on dfdaily.com (exceprts below).

Statistics show that in Guangdong province, only 30 percent secure a job upon graduation, a decrease of 10 percentage points from a year earlier, even worse than the situation in 2008 when global financial crisis began to hit the labor market.

The Ministry of Education has taken a series of measures to boost employment among college graduates, such as organizing more internship programs and vocational training for college seniors and holding more job fairs targeting new graduates.

But the problem has not been addressed fundamentally. Students of the arts are facing particularly bad prospects, and one of the reasons for this is that higher education institutions have rapidly expanded the scale of enrolment, especially in majors such as social science, because costs are cheaper than other courses.

The quality of higher education is compromised and cannot meet social demand, and not surprisingly, college students face fierce competition every year.

The fundamental solution is to improve the quality of higher education. Colleges and universities must be able to offer education that meets the need of society.