Date of Award

8-2015

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Economics and Finance

Committee Chair(s)

Dwight Israelsen

Committee

Dwight Israelsen

Committee

Devon Gorry

Committee

Aspen Gorry

Abstract

Recently, the higher education market is developing very fast, and China’s universities and colleges are increasing their enrollment. More and more college graduates with higher education backgrounds enter the labor market and the college graduates have to face higher unemployment pressure when they find jobs. For the college graduates’ unemployment problem, many literatures and research are focusing on over-enrollment problem, the influence of the major differences, and the influence of the industrial structure development.

This thesis examines the consequence of the over-enrollment problem with a group of data set and linear regressive analysis model. The finding indicates that there is not strong linear relation between the growth of total amounts of college graduates and college graduates average unemployment rate, and also the yearly growth of GDP of China. Chinese colleges and universities expand their enrollment is not unitary reason of high unemployment level of college graduates, the un-coordination between higher educational enrollment expanding pace and growth rate of economic development led to the serious situation of college graduate unemployment problem.

Moreover, the thesis also gives insight on the factor of major, and explains that major is one decisive factor with strong effect on college graduates’ unemployment with data comparison and graphic displays. The findings demonstrate that major is a decisive factor with strong effect on college graduates’ unemployment. The students have significant different chance to be hired with different groups of majors.

The thesis also demonstrates one of the most important reasons of college graduates’ unemployment problem, and this factor is the industrial structure. With further evidences, the findings state briefly that low technology secondary industries absorb the most of college graduates instead of the tertiary industry.

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