Top universities ‘more important’ for first degree than postgrad

With graduate unemployment soaring in China, graduates from the most prestigious universities in the country and highly ranked institutions abroad have an advantage in the heightened competition for sought-after jobs. However, now a new concern has arisen over whether a degree is more prestigious if it is obtained at a top university at undergraduate level – where competition between school leavers for admission is highest – or at postgraduate level.

Employer preferences for top universities are not new in the job market, or even confined to China, academics note. However, job ads sometimes specify “a good undergraduate background” in addition to other qualifications, interpreted as meaning a top university for their first degree.

An academic at a university in China’s Southern Guangdong province, speaking on condition of anonymity, told University World News: “We have seen more and more of our graduating students go on to higher degrees and PhDs, and they often try to go to more prestigious universities in China than ours for a better chance.

“Now we are hearing from some alumni that employers only care about the university they entered for their first degree, after taking the gaokao.” She was referring to China’s national higher education entrance examination.

“Our university feels bad about this. We are a relatively new university compared to older prestigious public universities and we are improving all the time, but we are not yet in the highest band of ranked universities in China. Students like our campus and our excellent facilities but they should not be held back because employers discriminate on the basis of where they graduated with their first degree,” she said.

Graduates have long complained about the declining value of the undergraduate degree and the need for higher qualifications to secure jobs. However, anecdotes that employers are preferring graduates from a top university if a candidate studied there for a first degree, regardless of where they obtained their second degree or PhD, has sparked a huge volume of comment on Chinese social media around the topic ‘first degree discrimination’.

“It is increasing the anxiety of graduates. There has always been a bias towards university ‘brand names’ but it is getting worse. Before, no one questioned at what stage in their life they were able to enrol in a top university,” the Guangdong academic said.

Universities also show bias

Wang Jianmin, director of the Strategic Talent Research Centre at Beijing Normal University and a professor in its school of government, was quoted recently in official media as saying he had observed: “several outstanding masters students in my college who have applied for doctoral studies but have not been successful for many years.

“Upon asking, I found out that their undergraduate degrees were from non-key universities, and one of them was not a full-time undergraduate. They are always eliminated in the final interview”.

He acknowledged that this may not be the only factor in the students’ lack of success but that some well-known universities were even more likely than enterprises to fall into the trap of ‘first degree bias’ in recruiting students, compared to the past.

“However, when the number of masters and doctors from ‘985’ and ‘211’ universities and the number of overseas returnees became statistically important or even a ranking indicator, this trend [of bias] spread to well-known universities, institutions and enterprises, and it can be said that they themselves created the current anxiety,” he was quoted in Guangming Daily as saying when the issue emerged amid high graduate unemployment figures in 2022.

Project 985 involved 39 universities designated as receiving extra government funding from 1999 to become ‘world class’, while the 211 project – which began in 1995 – designated some 100 comprehensive universities, with money provided to turn them into key research universities.

The Double First Class project, which replaced these two schemes in 2015, included 137 universities but also focused on specific disciplines in other universities with ‘world class impact’.

Premier talents

According to a myriad of posts on the social media platform Weibo, employers see undergraduates from top universities as sought-after ‘premier talents’, while those completing their postgraduate studies at the same institutions but with their first degree from a less prestigious university are considered lesser talents.

For example, many 211 universities that have little problem recruiting top-scoring students at undergraduate level, are scrambling to recruit doctoral students.

There is a view that the best students from top-tier universities go abroad for masters or PhDs after their first degree, leaving many good universities to recruit from lower tier universities into their postgraduate programmes, according to Weibo posts.

“It is pure snobbery,” one parent with two daughters at university in the southern city of Shenzhen told University World News, noting that entry standards are still high at postgraduate level at top universities.

“It is because employers are looking not just at the competition to secure a place at top universities at first degree level – there is the belief that these students worked particularly hard for the gaokao – but also at the ‘superior’ networks that they build up with their peers once they are at these top universities,” the parent said.

If graduates are from lower status universities employers look at outstanding performance in other areas to compensate, she added. But she also blamed universities for promoting such bias. “Universities like to boast about how many students they attract from 985 and 211 universities to their postgraduate programmes,” she noted.

National People’s Congress proposal

The belief in this type of bias is so widespread that Pan Fusheng, a deputy to the National People’s Congress (NPC) – China’s de facto parliament – a professor at Chongqing University and a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, put forward a proposal at this year’s NPC session held on 5-11 March aimed at eliminating first degree discrimination.

Pan argued in his proposal that ending such bias was important for educational equity and equal employment chances, noting that employers preferred graduates with their first degree from a 985, 211 or double first-class institution.

According to Pan’s proposal, laws and regulations should be revised to “focus on clearer prohibitions against recruitment discrimination and employment discrimination, and to formulate clearer and stricter penalty clauses; introduce more guiding and operational policies and systems, and establish a more comprehensive legal and policy environment for educational equity and employment equality”.

He also recommended introducing additional or more holistic criteria to include skills and experience, to reduce the importance of the first-degree university and to “ensure everyone has room for growth and development”.

Pan proposed strengthening government supervision and controls of any links between enrolment and employment provided by universities, which must inform the authorities of the employment outcomes of their graduates. This would include setting up “reporting channels” for complaints against employers.

Communist Party and government agencies, public institutions and state-owned enterprises should take the lead by recruiting graduates who are not from the most famous institutions, according to Pan’s proposal.

Ministry of Education officials have clarified in the past that references to an education record for public posts mainly refers to a person’s highest qualification or most recently obtained degree.

* Mimi Leung contributed to this article from Taipei.