Graduates of Xi'an Jiaotong University take selfies at their graduation ceremony on June 23, 2018. [Photo/Xinhua]
Graduates from elite universities in China increasingly tend to work in western regions and cities outside Beijing, with private companies as their top preferences, according to an analysis of China Youth Online based on the employment reports of more than 30 top universities in China.
More than half the graduates of China's acclaimed Peking University and Tsinghua University chose to work outside Beijing, with the former seeing 60.53 percent and the latter 59.8 percent of its graduates leaving the country's capital after graduation.
About 54.09 percent of graduates of Renmin University of China, and 54.68 percent graduates of China Agricultural University also opted to seek their dreams in cities and regions outside Beijing.
Work at the grassroots level, including in the western regions, has become an option for more graduates. In 2018, 562 graduates of Peking University chose to work at grassroots government departments and organizations, while 288 graduates from Tsinghua University took positions at public departments at the grassroots level.
Those leading universities located near the western regions witnessed more graduates heading west. About 46.14 percent of Xi'an Jiaotong University's graduates, 53.22 percent of Lanzhou University's graduates, and as many as 60.57 percent of Sichuan University's graduates selected the western region as the place for their first jobs, according to the report.
A Tencent staff member walks past two QQ mascots at a Tencent office building in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong province, on Dec 3, 2018. [Photo/Xinhua]
More graduates from Tsinghua University decided to work at private companies instead of traditional State-owned-enterprises, according to the university's data from 2018.
Among the 19 universities that calculated the employment rate in private-and State-owned enterprises, 17 of them saw a higher employment rate in private companies, data showed.
Renowned private Chinese enterprises such as Huawei, JD, Tencent and Alibaba stood out as the preferred companies for graduates. For example, 263 of the 2018 graduates of Southeast University and 211 graduates of Wuhan University were recruited by Huawei, making the company the biggest winner in the 2018 employment battle at the two universities.
Graduate school is another priority, with 78.3 percent of graduates from Tsinghua University and 69.22 percent of those from Fudan University choosing to seek further education after their undergraduate years.
The report also noted many graduates' starting annual salaries have surpassed the 100,000 yuan ($14,826) threshold in 2018.
The average annual salary of the 2,731 surveyed graduates of Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics is 153,100 yuan. More than 20 percent of college graduates of the Beijing Institute of Technology earn over 150,000 yuan a year, and nearly half of its postgraduates and more than 70 percent of its PhD graduates posted an annual salary of more than 150,000 yuan, the report said.
