A graduate from Minzu University of China prepares for the national post-graduate examination in a crammed, rented, apartment in this file photo taken in April. Yi Yafei / For China Daily

Jiao Wenjun, a college graduate from Shanxi province, rented this room outside Tsinghua University (2010 photo). He found it convenient to use the dining hall and library and attend classes free. Yin Yafei / for China Daily
 
Degree holders unable to wean themselves off alma maters. Wang Yan reports in Beijing.

Get a college degree and you`ll go far? Ye Dong made it to a 10-sq-m room, at 60 yuan ($9) a month, next door to his old college in Shaoguan, Guangdong province.

Now 23, Ye earned his diploma in June 2010. But he has barely left the campus. He still eats in the canteens and studies in the classrooms. Living close is convenient and familiar, he said.

Around almost every college and university in China are cheap apartments and bungalows for rent, where lots of graduates like Ye live, according to Hu Jiewang, a sociology professor at Jiaying University in Guangdong province. They live and look like enrolled students, but they aren`t.

Hu published his first research paper on these graduates in 2003, naming them "school-drifters". It became a popular search keyword and triggered wide media coverage and further academic research.

"The number is increasing over the years," Hu said. "A simple reason is that each year the number of graduates rises, while the employment rate remains basically the same. A large portion of the unemployed become school-drifters. Some previously employed also come back after a short, unsatisfying, work experience."

In 2005, researcher Shi Xu of Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics said in a published paper that the number of school-drifters in China had reached 100,000. Hu said, "It`s hard to calculate an accurate total", but he thinks the current number has far exceeded that.

A hollow feeling

Wang Yingjie, a 2009 graduate of Central University for Nationalities in Beijing, rented this nearby apartment while preparing for the grad school entrance exam (2010 photo). Provided to China Daily
 

Ye sees himself as a school-drifter. He said the real world is different from his ideal.

He landed a job as a production assistant in a local jewelry company in March last year but quit two months later. "The 2,400-yuan ($360) a month salary was high among my classmates, but the job was too tiring. I had only one day off every week and the working hours were too irregular," he said.

"Entering society made me feel hollow."

Not ready to take a job for now - he has some savings, loans from friends and money from an occasional job - Ye and the two school-drifters he lives with decided to try their luck in this year`s post-graduate exam. Ye`s goal is Jinan University in Guangzhou, where he failed to get in last year. "I want to be a teacher in the future, so I have to pursue higher degrees."

Hu said most of the school-drifters aim to enter grad school. Some hope to find a better job; some want to stay in big cities; and some are simply fearful of the intensely competitive job market.

Living on school resources, Hu said, "is a way of cutting living costs. But they do have some resource conflict with currently enrolled students."

Universities are enrolling more and more students, resulting in crowded campuses, full libraries and self-study classrooms, and dining halls as jammed as farmers markets. School-drifters add to that.

Hu also said, from his student management experience, that it`s hard to trace school-drifters on campus. Universities are managed by departments, and it`s unclear which departments should be responsible. "The fact is the schools now are pretty much neglecting this group," he said.

Why don`t drifters return home? "From ancient times the Chinese have had the notion that `going out` and `going to colleges` were good. Anybody coming back home without achievements is a loser," Hu said.

"A too-high expectation from parents could be a burden on students, and could prevent them from returning home after graduation. Many would not tell parents their real situation."

In Ye`s case, his mother died in 2009 and his father is essentially estranged. His married sisters occasionally support him, but they want him to get a job.

"They thought a bachelor`s degree should be enough to get a decent job," Ye said.

Fewer job options

Based on Hu`s research, school-drifters appeared as early as the 1980s. The State still allocated jobs for college graduates then, but it wasn`t enforceable: The graduate or the employer could decide not to sign the contract. If that happened, most of the unemployed graduates returned to their colleges and waited for the next round of allocation. But there weren`t many who did this, and they stayed on campus for just a few days.

An upsurge occurred in 1997, when the country launched the State-owned enterprises reform. Those enterprises had been the first choice of many career-starters, but they were hiring fewer graduates. Plus, the doorsills of foreign companies were still too high for new graduates, and private Chinese companies were still of low status.

As a result, many graduates felt lost, and the number who stayed in school - for further education, for better opportunities, or for the comfort - increased.

By 2003, colleges graduated the first group of students under a State push to increase higher education rates. Add that to layoffs by State-owned companies and the usual flood of migrant workers, and a tight job market reached a new peak.

A State policy issued in March 2002 said unemployed graduates could keep their hukou (household registration) in the schools for two more years. And many did, choosing to drift.

Unrealistic?

Hu listed score-oriented education as one cause of school-drifting. "It is not doing well in connecting with the real world."

Primary and middle school education makes good exam performance the only aim of students. Without fully following their interests when choosing majors, coupled with inflexible major transfers, many students are just stuck studying things they`re not interested in, Hu said.

"Moreover, career education is not yet treated with high importance. Many just think it`s not a big deal compared to academic education."

Ye, from Shaoguan University, agreed.

"I majored in administrative management as an undergraduate. The courses were too theoretical and I often skipped classes. Finding a job is hard. Some of my classmates just work at a shopping mall selling cell phones, making only 1,800 yuan a month," he said.

"We`re not competitive enough in the job market, even worse than some vocational schools."

Students, however, should also take some responsibility, Hu said.

Many hope their first jobs will bring everything, and some unrealistically compare themselves with their peers. Once unsatisfied, they look for ways out, and pursuing further studies becomes a popular option.

Statistics from the Ministry of Education show that the number of applications for the postgraduate exam in 2011 reached 1.5 million, a 7 percent annual increase.

Competition is fierce, though; only about one in three will make the cut.

A higher degree is commonly believed to lead to higher pay.

MyCos, a third-party education statistics consulting and evaluation agency, released a report in late October last year on wages for the Class of 2011. Based on 20,829 interviews, the average monthly pay was 4,160 yuan for advanced degree graduates, 2,514 yuan for undergraduates and 2,077 yuan for vocational school graduates.

The report also noted that those employed as early as October, for jobs they will begin after graduation in June, were more competitive and their wages were higher.

He started drifting in 2004, just one year after being admitted to a local university in his hometown of Dong-ying, Shandong province. "I quit because the university and the major (engineering) were not good."

Ji then headed to Shandong University in Jinan and audited the classes of an English major.

He said his father strongly opposed his decision to drop out and sit in another class that doesn`t guarantee a degree. "But I thought learning real knowledge was more important than getting an empty degree."

In late 2005, he drifted up to Peking University to learn more about international politics.

Like many other school-drifters, Ji settled in the cheapest place he could find, a 190-yuan-a-month bungalow near the campus. For living expenses, he depended on tuition refunds from the school he had left, plus part-time work as a tutor.

Free classes, though, were not easy to get, for the curriculum schedules are not open to the public. Ji started by wandering the classroom building, sitting in every class he caught up with and noting the dates and places. In that way he made his own schedule.

"It was a busy and rich time. I listened to everything and almost became an expert in the field," Ji said, showing a smile with satisfaction. But he also realized that knowledge doesn`t immediately bring salt and bread.

"I tried to find jobs in the middle, but all I got by then was a vocational school-level degree," which he obtained by taking the country`s exams for the self-taught.

He said many of his ideal employers wouldn`t even look at his resume.

He then decided to get into grad school - but the country sets a bachelor`s degree as a prerequisite for postgraduate exams. By the end of 2007, he completed the task by taking higher-level exams for the self-taught. And after a failed attempt in 2008, he finally became a grad student at China University of Petroleum in Beijing, in September 2009, majoring in international politics.

Ji is now in his second year and is interning at ifeng.com in Beijing, a news portal owned by Phoenix, a Hong Kong-based TV broadcaster. He said he wants to work in the media after graduation.

"It`s like I`ve taken an indirect route," he said, "I was kind of naive to think that simply learning knowledge would carve a niche for myself.

"In most cases, you`ve got to have a degree to fit into society."