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Higher Education Policy

, Volume 28, Issue 3, pp 333–352 | Cite as

Higher Education Expansion in China and the ‘Ant Tribe’ Problem

  • Yu He
  • Yinhua Mai
Article
First Online:

Abstract

College Enrolment Expansion policies have been implemented in China since 1999. Unfortunately, numbers of qualified teachers and the amount of educational funds input have not caught up with the pace of student intake. Even the curricula taught in colleges are outdated and work practice programmes are inefficient. As a result, new college graduates cannot meet the requirements of firms they wish to work for. Many graduates work in unskilled job positions with low pay. They are called the ‘Ant tribe’. We estimate that the accumulative number of persons in ‘Ant tribes’ had exceeded 3 million by 2010, and the corresponding cost to China’s annual GDP was over 0.22% in respect of effective labour input. Improvement in quality should take priority during the expansion of higher education.

Keywords

higher education enrolment expansion unemployment China 
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Copyright information

© International Association of Universities 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  • Yu He
    • 1
    • 2
  • Yinhua Mai
    • 1
  1. 1.Centre of Policy Studies (CoPS), Monash UniversityMelbourneAustralia
  2. 2.School of Economics and Trade, Hunan University (North Campus)ChangshaChina

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