3w ago

China's overqualified youth taking jobs as drivers, labourers and film extras

www.bbc.com China's young workers - overqualified and in low-paying jobs

With high youth unemployment rates, Chinese graduates are resorting to working as waiters, cleaners and movie extras.

China is now a country where a high-school handyman has a master's degree in physics; a cleaner is qualified in environmental planning; a delivery driver studied philosophy, and a PhD graduate from the prestigious Tsinghua University ends up applying to work as an auxiliary police officer.

These are real cases in a struggling economy - and it is not hard to find more like them.

World News @lemmy.world

MicroWave @lemmy.world

1mo ago

China's overqualified youth taking jobs as drivers, labourers and film extras

www.bbc.com /news/articles/ce8nlpy2n1lo

99 8

World News @beehaw.org

thelucky8 @beehaw.org

1mo ago

China's overqualified youth taking jobs as drivers, labourers and film extras amid troubling economy, lack of confidence in trajectory of the Chinese economy

www.bbc.com /news/articles/ce8nlpy2n1lo

13 13

China @sopuli.xyz

thelucky8 @beehaw.org

1mo ago

China's overqualified youth taking jobs as drivers, labourers and film extras amid troubling economy, lack of confidence in trajectory of the Chinese economy

www.bbc.com /news/articles/ce8nlpy2n1lo

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36 comments

I don't know that this is a bad thing, firstly the people themselves have richer intellectual lives because of it. Society is similarly enriched by extension and the country has a reserve pool of highly educated people it can draw upon as needed. There are only so many academic jobs available at any time but providing for and allowing everyone access to higher education is utopian and to be commended. It shows good planning for an ever more technical world.
- Yeah tell that to the people themselves who have spent so much of their life working hard to study at such prestigious institutions to not be able to find the employment they actually want.
  They worked hard with the expectation of being rewarded by it with a larger payout later in life. Instead they’re stuck toiling as low wage workers, and have let their families down.
  
  If your only reason to seek education is to make money, you 100% deserve to fail and suffer.
- Was coming to say this.
  It's a very... anglo conservative view to see education as a financial investment to get a job (and a working class person with an education as a waste of resources).
  There's an argument to be made about the labor market in China and how its working class is remunerated in an economy designed for cheap exports, but this framing is probably not it.
  
  So you're trying to tell me that the Chinese don't see education as a financial investment and they just do it because it's cool?
  
  I'm not Chinese, so I can't answer that.
  I can tell you that's absolutely not how or why I got my own degree. For which I paid barely anything, so hard to picture it as an investment. And it didn't seem to be much of an "investment" for my classmates, many of whom paid nothing or were paid to do it.
  We did think it was cool, though. Got to meet very smart people, both as professors and as classmates, some of which I keep in touch to this day. Got to learn stuff I hadn't even considered and access technical means I couldn't have afforded. Zero regrets, even if my degree is only very tangentially related to my current job.
  So... does that answer the question?
  
  Sorry, but that's just an absolutely snobbish way of looking at education.
  Of course it's an investment, you spent years of your life, took exams, wrote theses, sat in boring lectures because a person in their late teens and early 20s has nothing better to do than that? Yeah, sorry, that's bullshit and you know it.
  
  In some countries you don't pay for education and many people absolutely love the lectures. You can study something because you love the subject. I myself enjoyed every single lecture I had and I often attended even lectures that I didn't need in my curriculum, just for the delight of learning things. I understand there are people that study just to get a degree and employability and don't really like their specialisation that much. That's ok. But studying what you're passionate about can be very fulfilling and it's ok too, nothing snobbish about it.
  
  And that is utter bullshit.
  You can't be that dense to seriously say you enjoyed every single lecture. That's a lie, and you know it.
  BTW, I'm from one of those "some countries". And no, nobody, not a single person enjoyed everything. That's not how reality works.
  Who are you trying to impress here?
  
  I'm just telling you about my anecdotal experience. You don't have to believe me. It changes nothing - I loved my lectures to bits. For me, it was such an improvement from high school where I was often bored! At uni, I studied what I was really interested in and even could choose from different lectures. Not every lecturer was good, so I sometimes got bored because of that, but not because I wouldn't like the subjects they were teaching - I enjoyed every bit of information I learned about at uni. I'm sorry it was so different for you that you can't believe this could be real for someone.
  Edit: I think I found a better way to explain myself: Imagine a nerd learning all the nerd stuff. That was me.
  
  You're lying to yourself, and you know it.
  It is physically not possible to enjoy everything. You already backtracked, suddenly you were bored, but sitting through something boring is not bad for some reason?
  
  I didn't like all lecturers, but I did like all the information, there was no lecture with boring informations for me. I get it. I didn't confirm your experience, therefore I must be lying. There's no way someone could be built differently from you. I suppose I should play the game and say I didn't like at least something, even though that's not true, to make myself more relatable.
  
  I myself enjoyed every single lecture I had
  I didn’t like all lecturers
  Haters might call that a contradiction.
  I didn’t confirm your experience, therefore I must be lying.
  No, you're lying because you don't confirm the almost universal constant that nothing of that magnitude can be all positive. Net positive, sure. Mostly positive, absolutely. But all positive? Bullshit. Especially, if you keep backtracking.
  
  I know nothing of the sort, and I honestly think it's far less snobbish than the alternative.
  I absolutely had nothing better to do than education, that much I give you. It's a high bar, I was doing some really cool shit.
  Thankfully, my government agreed with me on that one, and I'm more than happy to pay taxes for the rest of my life to make it keep being the case. And thankfully, my parents agreed as well. My dad was adamant I didn't take a job on the side despite us not being particularly well off. Probably because he's a left-leaning teacher himself and HE worked his ass off and paid all the taxes so we could all do that, not to have us drive living wages down by squatting at McDonalds, or whatever.
  And sure, it was an investment in the way reading a book in my own time is an investment. It made me better at a thing and taught me things and gave me time to figure stuff out. It was certainly not an investment in my career. I haven't submitted my degree with a job application once in decades of working for a living. Did alright anyway, wouldn't have done as well without the things I lived and learned or the people I met and learned from.
  Which is what education is for, in my book. If you're looking at dollar input versus lifetime dollar output... well, you do need an education, so maybe you can get that while you're making a fool of yourself getting that MBA or whatever.
  
  Smell that? That's the smell of privilege buddy, it's not an investment for him because it doesn't need to be. Like someone who buys a watch for funsies.
  
  Any argument that begins with "So you're trying to tell me" is being made by a person who is NOT, in fact, being told what they say they are.
- This was never about academic jobs vs non-academic jobs. Yes it's true there's only so many academic positions for people with higher education, but those people with higher education should be working in high economic value positions where their level of education is actually of use. For example these people with higher education degrees in science and engineering should be working in an R&D team of an industry leading company, instead of working as a delivery driver, film crowd, or a fricking police axillary which anyone without the education background could perfectly do.
  This is not what happening because there is no available positions in any industry leading company's R&D team because such companies cannot afford expanding their advanced level work force. There is a tremendous lack of social economical resources aka employment opportunities, not only this is a real sign of a struggling economy, but this is also extremely detrimental to the country and its economy as a whole, because a de fecto surplus of people with higher education degree devalues such qualifications, and make it even more difficult for people with such qualifications to find career opportunities where their qualification can be used for creating value, even if such social economical resources does come to existences, this leads to a repeating cycle that keeps getting worse.
  
  I think that if there are indeed fewer industry research opportunities in China than in equivalent Western conditions it is likely due to the very rapid advance of these areas in China and consequent current lack of legacy infrastructure rather than due to a struggling economy. I like very much the idea of police officers with unrelated doctorates, science clubs in factories and plumbers arguing about the Fermi paradox over lunch. I think society would be far better for it and it is impossible to gauge the great value of wide and seemingly off topic experience, individually or in communities.
  
  Technological advancements don't reduce research opportunities, rather they create more opportunities because the whole industry becomes more developed and more sophisticated, as well as creating new industries. When this doesn't happen, most of the time it is because of a weak and dysfunctional economy (as well as dysfunctional society due to poorly devised social political policies) cannot always support turning research and development to actual commercial possibilities. This used to be exactly what China is very good at in fact, because China has some of the world's most vertically integrated production capacity, like for example you can find the factories that make 70% of the different types of components in a smartphone in the same city, significantly reducing production and supplier overhead to an extent you rarely see in other countries until very recently, so it was never the lack of industrial capabilities here.
  I agree it would be super cool to see plumbers discussing about Fermi paradox in their break time, but the reality is that is a very American middle class thing, whereas in China the majority of population have extreme social prejudice and bigotry between different social economical classes and education backgrounds, its extreme extent can only be matched by the racial and gender prejudice in the US, and I do not think Chinese people are socially and culturally equipped to handle this increased amount of contact across social economical status and education backgrounds anymore than American people are in average in handling contact across races and gender identities, while having significant less developed and significantly more dysfunctional social institutes.

36 comments