Degrees of difficulty(2)

Arts degrees

For some courses hard work alone cannot guarantee you the job you want or you believe you deserve. Wang Linyi, a graduate from the Shanghai Institute of Visual Art, studied radio and television editing and directing because she was weak in math and did not want to study it at a higher level. Before gaokao, the annual national college entrance exam, high school graduates can take an arts exam, which can involve painting, music, dance and media. The tests are administered independently by the various art schools. Students, who pass these exams, can get into college even if they have lower scores in other subjects like Chinese and math.

Wang interned in a TV station before graduation, but she failed to get a job there. "Seven of my classmates were employed by TV stations or other media organizations, but almost all of them depended on guanxi (family connections)," Wang said. She got a job in an advertising company and was paid 2,700 yuan a month. She stayed there for a bit over one year before electing to set up her own company. 

Sun Ling graduated in design but her career has not worked out as happily. She has had three jobs in the four years after graduation. Most of her classmates are working in fields connected with their courses like interior design and landscaping, but they are dissatisfied with their low salaries. 

"A lot of companies need arts graduates, but many of them are very small," Sun said. She had learned nothing from working at two companies where she was given very little work. Sun still dreams of winning a job with a major company.

She is comparatively lucky. Arts graduates have had poor employment prospects for the past few years. Last year nearly 40 percent of the arts graduates in Shanghai failed to secure a job.

City employers say that some of these graduates were not hired because they lacked appropriate professional skills. "They don't have a solid knowledge of painting or other practical skills. It usually takes at least six months to get them to a level where they can do the work," said one manager surnamed He from a film animation company.

Sun said that some graduates did not have a solid grounding in painting skills because they only had a few months to study practical art before they went to college. 

According to a report in the Shanghai Evening Post, as opposed to established art schools, some colleges have rushed into offering courses but they lack qualified teachers and even basic teaching resources. This makes it even harder for students to attain skills.

Experts warn arts students to learn more about their studies and future prospects and not dream of the glamour working as a television star, artist or rock stars. 

Labor and social security

The course Su Qing studied - labor and social security - has special challenges. Now a social security officer in a government department Su is one of just five classmates working in a field related to their studies. Ninety-five percent of the students for this course work in human resources departments. "They told me that it's difficult for students of this subject to find a job and the starting salaries are not high, about 3,000 yuan a month," Su said. She is earning slightly more but she treasures the stability and importance of the work.

"The subject was not widely taught until five years ago when the country began to attach importance to employment welfare for ordinary people and increased the overseeing of companies, pushing them to safeguard the rights of their employees," said Tian, a teacher from the School of Social Development of the East China University of Political Science and Law. 

Tian said that the employment rates for graduates of this subject at her university reached 80 percent last year, but other colleges did not have the same success. Figures from the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission indicate that the employment rate of labor and social security graduates was around 66 percent last year.

"Government agencies like social security departments provide a limited number of job positions each year, so graduates have to look for other chances to work in the human resources departments of companies handling workers' welfare," Tian said.  

He said that the revised 2008 employment contract laws gave more protection to workers with stronger and specific regulations. This pushed companies to employ professionals to deal with employees' rights.

Several colleges now offer courses related to human resources to help graduates find work. Other courses for human resources candidates focus on recruitment and performance assessments, and labor economics, which studies the labor market and payment systems. 

"The difference is that the labor and social security course emphasizes medical insurance and social welfare for workers. Whether they will recruit our graduates, however, depends on the specific needs of the companies," Tian said.

Some good all-round advice for graduates came from Fu Jianqin, the head of the Higher Education Department of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission. "Businesses are not particular about the specific studies for liberal arts graduates. What students should do in school is learn how to observe and think, which is fundamental to their careers in the long run."