Many degrees of employment

If getting a job has become a problem for university graduates, creating new ones for them has been giving sleepless nights to policymakers. Since the number of students seeking higher education began rising drastically in 1999, university graduates have found it more difficult to find jobs they deserve. In mid-2008, when the economy was going strong, nearly one million graduates, or about one in every five, failed to get job.

This year, when nearly 6.11 million graduates have to hunt for jobs under austere economic conditions, something weird has emerged. According to Nanfang Metropolis News, a college graduate in Shaanxi province shared online on July 12 his experience of "getting hired unwittingly". He was surprised to find a "college graduate employment agreement" with a company's stamp in his personal files. More surprisingly, he had never heard of the company. His roommate, too, got a similar agreement from another unknown employer.

The Shaanxi graduate's posting on the Internet drew an overwhelming response, with many netizens saying they had undergone the same experience. Some fresh graduates even said they had been forced by their universities to provide employment contracts before getting their diplomas. Others complained that their universities had fabricated their employment agreements.