Some early-career scientists in the U.S. have been suggesting since the early '90s (if not before) that graduate schools should limit admissions to improve the job prospects of advanced-degree graduates. Now that's exactly what's happening...in China. The situation there, however, is quite different from the one in the United States.
China's state-run news agency is reporting that the country intends to cap the growth in enrollment in its graduate schools at 5%. That may sound like a rapid rate of expansion by American standards, but, according to Tang Min, deputy chief representative and chief economist in the Asian Development Bank's Beijing Office (quoted in the news-agency story), graduate enrollments in China have "have grown fivefold in six years."
Apparently that expansion was too rapid and the quality of the training declined. For the first time, the unemployment rate in China among people with post-graduate degrees exceeded the unemployment rate for people with undergraduate degrees.
Hat tip: The Chronicle of Higher Education.
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