Amid one of the toughest jobs market here in China for college graduates, the Chinese government has made fresh plans to expand the country's service industry to create employment opportunities.

 

　　However, as CRI's Shen Chengcheng reports, experts are calling for changes to be made in the human resources and education system to assist graduates in finding jobs.

 

　　The service industry has traditionally been a main employer for college graduates.

 

　　But this year's record high 7-million graduates are just too much for the economy to take.

 

　　Albert Park is the director of the institute for emerging markets studies at Hong Kong University Science and Technology.

 

　　"The biggest problem right now is the problem of quantity, meaning that the system is producing so many college graduates at a time when the economy is recovering somewhat slowly."

 

　　The number of college graduates has been on the rise since the government's college admission expansion policy in 1999.

 

　　Professor Park says in the long run, China needs to keep producing college graduates to help its economic restructuring, but this means the short term problem of graduate employment will not go away.

 

　　Hong Chengwen is the standing deputy director of the Institute of Higher Education with Beijing Normal University.

 

　　He says in tough economic times like this, the government needs to increase the hiring quota of permanent employees into enterprises, public institutes and government departments.

 

　　"The central and local government departments making those hiring quota decisions need to make adjustments according to the situation of the jobs market. If we increase the intake of new employees by 2-hundred-thousand this year, even though it won't solve the problem completely, it sends out a strong message that the government is on the same side with the graduates."

 

　　Hong says if the government wants a long-term solution and a way to improve graduate job searches, it should make higher education more market-oriented.

 

　　Professor Park agrees.

 

　　"The people making the decision about educational planning need to be talking much more closely with the businesses. There are a lot of issues about the matching of skills of college graduates what their learning and whether those are the skills that are being demanded in the workforce by employers."

 

　　According to Hong, enrollment plans in Chinese universities are made by two government ministries, the Human Resources Ministry and the Education Ministry after consulting with businesses about their needs.

 

　　However Universities and businesses are not directly involved in decision making.

 

　　For CRI, I'm Shen Chengcheng.