Many young Chinese choose graduate school over a grim job market
Covid lockdowns and regulatory crackdowns have inhibited demand for graduates
Marriage, according to a French proverb, is like a fortress besieged. Those outside want to get in; those inside want to get out. That thought, immortalised in the title of a novel by Qian Zhongshu from 1947, has more recently been applied to China’s graduate schools. At the end of last year, a record 4.6m people tried to storm these fortresses by taking the postgraduate admissions exam, an increase of over 21% from the previous year.
This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline “Storming the fortress”
From the May 28th 2022 edition
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