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Report reveals nation's lack of quality graduates
By Chen Hua (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-10-11 08:43
Despite its apparently vast labour supply, China faces a looming shortage of
home-grown talent, with serious implications for the multinationals now in China
and for the growing number of Chinese companies with global ambitions.
So found new research issued over the weekend by McKinsey Global Institute
(MGI), McKinsey & Company's economics think tank, and McKinsey's China
office.
Less than 10 per cent of Chinese job candidates would be suitable to work in
a foreign company within the sectors of services and exports, MGI said.
To avoid a talent shortage and to sustain its economic ascent, China must
produce more graduates fit for employment in world-class companies, whether they
are local or foreign ones, the report said.
Commenting on the report's findings, Andrew Grant, a director who leads
McKinsey & Company's Greater China Practice, said China's looming quality
labour shortage could stall its economic growth and its migration up the value
chain from manufacturing to services.
China must dramatically increase funding for its universities, improve its
English-language instruction by recruiting teachers from abroad, and do more to
attract home the many students who study abroad, the director said.
The year-long study, which included interviews with 83 human-resource
professionals involved with hiring local graduates in low-wage countries,
revealed:
Out of nine occupations studied (engineers, financial workers, accountants,
quantitative analysts, generalists, life science researchers, doctors, nurses,
and support staff), only 1 out of 10 Chinese job candidates would be suitable
for work in a foreign company. For example, despite having a pool of 1.6 million
engineers, only 160,000 of these are considered suitable for work in
multinationals, about the same as in the United Kingdom.
In China, engineers' education is biased towards theory. They receive little
practical experience or involvement in teamwork projects compared with graduates
in the West.
For jobs in the eight other occupations studied, poor English skills was one
of the main reasons given for rejecting Chinese job applicants.
Companies that are already in China and serve its fast-growing domestic
market may also have difficulty finding enough suitable employees in key service
and managerial occupations.
China will produce 1.1 million graduates suitable for employment in
world-class service companies from 2003 to 2008. Over that period, large foreign
multinationals and joint ventures alone will have to employ an additional
750,000 graduates.
In addition to front-line staff, there is an acute shortage of middle
managers: over the next 10-15 years, China's companies will need 75,000 managers
who can work effectively in global environments. Today, they only have 3,000 to
5,000.
On top of the generally low suitability of Chinese graduates, they are also
widely dispersed and not very mobile.
(China Daily 10/11/2005 page10)
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