Students prepare for the annual national postgraduate entrance exam in the school library of Hebei University in North China’s Hebei province on Dec 25, 2012.[Photo/Xinhua]

The national?entrance examination for postgraduate studies was held on Saturday and Sunday. According to official data, 1.77 million people have applied for the exam, 7 percent more than last year. Many graduates choose postgraduate study in the hope of a better future, but will it truly grant them one? West China Metropolis Daily says:

Why do people apply for postgraduate studies? For some of them, it might be because they are interested in doing academic research; but for many of the college graduates it is the hope that a higher degree will open the door to a more promising future that attracts them.

Besides, as the Chinese economy has now entered a new normal, it is more difficult for college graduates to find satisfying jobs. Thus many choose to delay their job-hunting for three years.

But the hope brought by a master's degree is rather illusive. Society is already divided into various groups and it is hardly possible for somebody without a good family background to change their destiny with merely a degree.

Worse, the pressure on fresh graduates to find a job will only continue to increase. Three years later, when these graduates graduate with a master's degree, they will probably find it more difficult to get a job. Of course, college graduates have the right to pursue postgraduate studies, but when such a choice becomes too popular, that's a social problem.

Worse, many colleges encourage their students to blindly apply for postgraduate studies, and boast of it as an "achievement". In some extreme cases, they even feed freshmen with such ideas and repeat it again and again during their years in college. That's also a key reason so many graduates apply for postgraduate studies.

The college officials might have their own considerations, because with more graduates entering postgraduate schools, the employment rate for their graduates will be higher. And these colleges can attract more high school graduates by promising them a better future that they do not know is illusive.

In order to break this pattern, it is necessary to give high school and college students more convenient access to information so that they have a clearer understanding of their future paths. Only when students have a rational expectation of what a master's degree can bring them, will they stop blindly pursuing one.

(China Daily 12/29/2015 page8)