Chinese Higher Education Reflections (1): Reduce University Enrollment or Persuade Young People to Accept Their Fate?

This paper examines the structural contradiction between the expansion of China’s higher education system and employment outcomes for university graduates. It explores the limitations of existing mechanisms for allocating higher education resources and considers the possibility of adjusting enrollment scales based on actual employment outcomes. The paper first reviews relevant research on higher education expansion, graduate unemployment, overeducation, and education-job mismatch, noting that graduates’ employment difficulties involve not only the quantity of jobs but also job quality, returns to education, and career development opportunities. Second, based on the Departmental Employment Quality Index (DEQI), the paper attempts to measure the employment stability and relative income levels of graduates from different departments by tracking pension insurance contribution months and average contribution bases within three years after graduation, and proposes linking enrollment scales, fiscal appropriations, and department exit mechanisms to these measures. The paper further analyzes the limitations of substituting employment expectation guidance for adjustments to educational supply, pointing out that lowering graduates’ employment expectations cannot automatically create high-quality jobs nor ensure that employers will pay a premium for university credentials. Finally, from the perspective of returns on educational investment and the distribution of costs and benefits, the paper proposes an analytical framework of “instantized returns, frontloaded costs, and backloaded employment risks,” discussing potential disparities in benefits and risk distribution among universities, local economic actors, and family educational investments.