China’s graduates face a whole new set of gruelling tests

Around 2024 Mr Wang, a tutor for people taking graduate-admissions tests, saw the number of students in his classes plummet by more than half. At first he thought something had gone badly wrong with his teaching. But comparing notes with others in the industry, he found the problem was pervasive. Mr Wang had also casually posted an ad offering his services as a tutor for the national civil-service exam. He was shocked to receive hundreds of replies. His newly opened class was filled with top talent, including two students who had flown from Hong Kong after graduating there. “Holy shit,” Mr Wang thought. “The winds have changed.”

He is right. Young Chinese are rethinking the options they face when they complete undergraduate studies. Between 2023 and 2026 the number of people who registered to take exams for admission to master’s courses fell by a third, from 4.7m to 3.4m. Meanwhile, between 2021 and 2026, the number who applied (and passed checks) to take the national civil-service exam more than doubled to 3.7m, a record high. Interest in the latter now exceeds the former for the first time (see chart).

An attraction of a master’s degree is that it can upgrade one’s human capital (at least, in theory), while delaying entry into the job market. But the civil service offers a far more immediate reward: stable, if staid, employment. Stella Zhou, who is 24, attended a tutoring camp for the civil-service exam. For three months she started the day at 9am and slogged through thousands of practice questions, only retiring to her dormitory after 9pm. “My bum hurt from sitting all day,” she gripes.

Last year about 20% of those who took the exam for admission to a master’s course were accepted. The national civil-service exam is far more competitive. This year there are 38,000 positions available, meaning about 99% of those who took the written test in November (including many postgraduates) will be disappointed by the time the process, which also includes interviews, wraps up in the middle of the year. A 26-year-old woman, Ms Ma, is studying for a master’s degree in law. Some 80% of her class are planning to take the civil-service exam. It is a “battle royale”, she says (having a master’s degree confers little advantage for civil-service jobs, most of which do not require one). Because success is so unlikely, many are also sitting provincial- or city-level civil-service exams as a less prestigious back-up.

The reason is clear: a bleak job market. Ms Ma, who is from the eastern province of Shandong, had never thought she would be interested in the civil service. She changed her mind after working as an intern at a small company: her colleagues were often not paid on time. When China was booming, government jobs were thought dull (“If you become a civil servant, you can see the whole of your life,” as a common saying goes). Now, as the economy falters, they are highly sought-after. Ms Zhou, who is from the south-western region of Chongqing, received an offer of 300,000 yuan ($43,000) per year from JD.com, an e-commerce giant, to work in its procurement arm. But she turned it down to try her luck with the civil service. Young people increasingly prefer certainty to good pay.

Between 2020 and 2022, when China imposed a strict “zero-covid” policy, many students swarmed into postgraduate studies as a way of postponing the job hunt during economic turbulence (in China, a master’s often takes three years). Since then, the number sitting the master’s entrance exam has dropped. It has become clearer that staying in education produces diminishing returns. A survey in 2024 by Zhaopin, a hiring platform, found that by the spring recruitment round, 44.4% of postgraduates had received a job offer—one percentage point lower than those with bachelor’s degrees and 12 points below those with vocational training. It might be expected that many would apply for a master’s after failing the civil-service exam. But many graduates fear the job market could get worse. Better to take the plunge sooner rather than later, some reckon.

So the rise in applications for the civil service and fall in demand for graduate courses are two sides of the same coin: a weak economy. It could become a self-reinforcing trend: the more that talented youngsters turn their backs on the private sector and seek government jobs, the less vigorous China’s economy will become. ■