Unemployed Chinese Graduates Say No Thanks To Factory Jobs 366
hackingbear writes "While people and politicians are pitching for more education and reviving manufacturing in this country, jobs go begging in factories while many college educated young workers, which now number 11 times more than in 1989, are unemployed or underemployed in China. A national survey of urban residents, released this winter by a Chinese university, showed that among people in their early 20s, those with a college degree were four times as likely to be unemployed as those with only an elementary school education. Yet, it is not about the pay. Many factories are desperate for workers, despite offering double-digit annual pay increases and improved benefits, while an office job would initially pay as little as a third of factory wages. The glut of college graduates is eroding wages even for those with more marketable majors, like computer science. Vocational schools and training programs are unpopular because they suffer from a low status [or are seen as] for people from unsuccessful, poor, or peasant backgrounds. 'The more educated people are, the less they want to work in a factory,' said an unemployed graduate. If we do succeed bringing back factory jobs, are there enough people who want them?"
Re:And why should they? (Score:5, Informative)
"wrote memorization"
IT IS "ROTE," NOT "WROTE."
This is the second usage in this thread so far. Good grief.
If you are going to criticize the current education system, then use the correct terms.
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Re:I can see both sides of this (Score:4, Informative)
Now at 63, he doesn't have any hobbies and shuns intellectual stimulation because his brain has been dulled beyond repair.
That was his choice, not a product of the job. If you truly want to develop a hobby or have intellectual stimulation, you find a way to do so. If he was working so much OT that he was making 90k a year, work a little less over time, make 80k or 75k a year, and have time to travel, or build a car in your garage, or whatever hobby you want. Just like with any other job you find, you have to have to find that balance between making enough money to support your desired quality of life and the time to enjoy that life. At work I can talk about things like sports, or guns (surprising number of people their are pro firearm ownership) with my coworkers. If I want more stimulating conversation, I go hang out with my grad school friends who are getting their Master's/PhDs, and we can talk about politics, or science, or, again, even sports. Or I can stay at home and read books that are generally relegated to being used as textbooks but I read for fun because I enjoy the subject material. We only stop learning and thinking when we want to.
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Re:And why should they? (Score:3, Informative)
I was a college student both in China and the U.S. (transfered over in my 3rd year).
The difficulty level of college is about the same in both countries. Some of the hard math/science courses are more advanced in China, because a lot of materials considered college level in the U.S. are taught in high school in China. But on the other hand, courses in China are strictly major-focused, while in the U.S. you need to go through all the "core courses" that cover a wide range of topic and have nothing to do with your major, which was the difficult part for me due to language/culture barrier.
Bottom line: if you don't care about your GPA, you can coast through college in both countries; if GPA is your goal, you will need to STUDY no matter where you are.
Re:It's the stigma (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know about 1990, but we definitely had some pretty nasty air pollution about 40-60 years ago. When I was < 10 and growing up in Ohio circa 1980, I remember that air pollution was pretty much everywhere, even in smaller cities, like the Warren-Youngstown-Sharon area roughly halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. My first "omg" memory of Florida was looking up during recess one day about a month after we moved there, and freaking out because I could see the full moon in broad daylight. That was something you never, EVER saw in Ohio. Or at least something *I* had no memory of ever seeing.
Hell, I spent July 5, 1994 in New York, and remember BARELY being able to see the Twin Towers from Midtown. The whole city smelled like a burning log in a fireplace. Likewise, I spent a week in Los Angeles sometime in August 1996, and remember driving into L.A. on LaCienega drive... I made it over the mountain, and saw the famous vista with LA (well, OK, I guess it was actually Beverly Hills) spread out in front of me... except you couldn't actually see anything except faint rooftops a mile or two away, and a sea of opaque smog. In LA's defense, though, its smog didn't really have any particular odor. It was opaque to a degree I'd never seen in my life, but other than obscuring most of the views, it didn't really bother me.
Anyway, onto the pics:
Pittsburgh, 1948... during the DAY: http://bike-pgh.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/smog1.jpg [bike-pgh.org]
Cleveland, 1973: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/CLEVELAND_SKYLINE_IN_THE_SMOG_OF_JULY_20%2C_1973%2C_DAY_OF_POLLUTION_ALERT_-_NARA_-_550190.jpg [wikimedia.org]
New York, 1972: http://earth911.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Smog-1970s.jpg [earth911.com]
Los Angeles, 1948: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/jamesfallows/los-angeles-smog_53499058.jpg [theatlantic.com]
Manhattan, 1966: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wavz13/4083896787/ [flickr.com]