China is waking up to a potentially damaging mismatch in its labor market. A record 7.27 million graduates, equivalent to the entire population of Hong Kong, will

enter the job market this year — a market that has a shortage of skilled workers.Yet many of these university and college students are ill-equipped to fill those jobs, prompting the government to look at how it can overhaul the higher education system to bridge the gap. 

The problem is part structural, part attitude.While most liberal arts students are still looking for work after graduating this summer, 22-year-old Li Xidong is preparing to start a job as an electrician that he landed well before finishing three years of training at a small vocational school.Li's diploma may appear less impressive, but his coveted job in a tight labor market may hold the key to the employment conundrum in the world's second largest economy. The machinery sector alone projects a gap of 600,000 computer-automated machine tool operators this year, media have reported.The government has said it plans to refocus more than 600 local academic colleges on vocational and technical education — replacing literature, history and philosophy with technology skills such as how to maintain lathes and...... 

© MAXNOVO MACHINE