Higher education and graduate employment in Mainland China and Taiwan: A comparative review in the context of massification

This paper examines the issues about graduate employment in the context of massification of higher education in mainland China and Taiwan. The issues mainly refer to high unemployment rate, relatively low starting wages and job mismatch. The paper draws on government documents, statistics and research findings to provide a descriptive analysis of these issues, thereby revealing the relationship between educational attainment and social mobility in the two Chinese societies. The empirical results indicate that higher education qualifications do not have significantly positive impacts on earnings and possibly bring negative effects on unemployment rate in mainland China and Taiwan. These findings shed light on the validly of human capital theory, which assumes that being educated brings higher productivity, and screening hypothesis, which focuses on the sorting function of education, in understanding the economic values of higher education in the two societies.