West China Second Hospital recently posted a job ad seeking 34 nurses. Surprisingly, the job posting required that applicants possess a master’s or PhD degree. Typically, nursing roles in mainland China require only an undergraduate degree.
Fierce competition for jobs in China has led to “degree inflation,” with a spiraling trend of employers demanding higher and higher qualifications from job applicants. This year saw a record 4.74 million people take China’s graduate school entrance exam, up from only 2.38 million in 2018. In Beijing there are now over 160,000 individuals who hold a master’s or doctoral degree, surpassing for the first time the roughly 130,000 people in Beijing who hold only an undergraduate college degree. Similar trends are happening across China.
Some Chinese netizens reacted strongly to the Sichuan hospital’s job posting on social media, expressing outrage or lamenting over what they saw as increasingly unrealistic academic requirements for jobs.
Source: Central News Agency (Taiwan), November 14, 2023
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202311140329.aspx