Recruiting in China

China needs to take action against the large number of poorly qualified and low quality professionals with university or college certification, Chinese Talents Society Vice President Wang Tongxun said.

China Youth Daily reports Wang Tongxun issued his warning at a forum on human resources development held recently in Beijing.

Record numbers of Chinese citizens have received higher education in recent years. Over 66.5 million people have college degrees or above and around 17% of high school graduates enrol at university. There were 2.8 million graduates in 2005, nearly 9 times the number of graduates in 1985.

But Wang Tongxun said that as universities and colleges grow from institutions that cater to an elite group of students to institutions that education the masses, several problems have been created.

Degrees and titles are easy to obtain in China. Some universities or colleges issue diplomas recklessly, even providing them to people who have not attended the university courses. The lack of a sound qualification system allows poorly skilled Chinese professionals to receive titles more easily than their foreign counterparts.

Wang Tongxun also said the academic research at Chinese universities and research institutes is often carried out in a poorly planned and impatient manner. The resulting papers are rarely cited by foreign researchers and rank below 120 in the world in terms of citations. As a result, most of the research has no value and can't be put into practice.

To compound the problem, the tendency for employers to value people according to their degrees rather than their talent and work experience has led to a culture of degree-hunting where people neglect to improve their talents in a measurable way.

Finally, Wang Tongxun said the phenomenon has led to a brain drain. Around 930,000 Chinese have traveled overseas to study since 1986, but only 230,000 have returned