The Measures for China’s University Students Applying Social Capital to Graduate Employment

Abstract

This paper tries to use the theory to make some researches on graduate employment, in the hope of giving helpful countermeasures and suggestions for graduate employment. Along with the popularization of China's higher education, the difficult employment of univeristy graduates has become a problem at present. In the year 2009, the number of university graduates is higher than 6 million in China. The one-time employmet rate of university graduate keeps in declining. A recent survey from Social Survey Institute of China shows that the overall employment rate of university students is 35.6% in 2009. This paper will study and discuss the employment of univeristy students in perspective of capital. Social is the network formed by interpersonal connections, which takes connections as the base, certain culture as the behavioral norms, and common benefits of certain group or organization as the purpose. The social capital of univeristy student refers to all kinds of connectons that can be used to acquiring resources from today's structure and operations, and the capability of dealing with different relations. Univeristy student can gain from the position of parents. Parents are the most direct for university student. The overall status of relatives of parents and the network formed by parents' connections, and their determine the of university student to a great degree. In the era of information network, the possession of information can increase the in a sense. The information network circulation includes the flow of information and the exchange of knowledge. The circulation can help to get usful information and achieve the exchange of network resources. The exchange of information will generate a sense of trust, realizing the circulation and proliferation of information. University student can make best use of in job hunting. The author studies this issue further as follows. 1. The Family Should Focus on Building the Primitive Accumulation of Social Capital The family of univeristy student is from the main stock of the family before entering the university. Social theory shows that the primitive accumulation of family is derived from the interpersonal network of parents and relatives based on trust, skills, status, and characters. This comes through two ways: within the family and the outside of the family. The within the family includes the interactive netowrk formed by parents' resources and relatives' connections. The outside the family includes unrelated connections and contact network. The two networks are overlapped and in a dynamic circulation. In China, people value relations. The composition of the network needs time and test of morals and characters. The establishment of the network needs dedication and satisfaction. This network is the contribution of affections and the test on morals. In Chinese tradition, as the university student gets along with family members and relatives, he or she is under the influences of norms recognized by the network. The university student can look after the supports and comforts from the under the pressure of graduate employment. Meanwhile, the outside the family constituted by the university student connects the family capital, achieving an integration of capital, and forming a giant network, which will play an important role in the establishment of university student's status.