Employment pressure will ease for university graduates in Beijing in four years' time, experts said at a forum last week.

Some 204,000 new graduates will walk out of campus in the Chinese capital this summer and the number equals the demand for university graduates in 2011, said Xin Tieliang, chief of Beijing Municipal Bureau of Personnel.

Though the employment rate of university students in recent years remained over 90 percent in Beijing, it is due to the decline of their employment quality, said Yang Heqing, an expert on labor and employment with Renmin University of China.

This year, the number of graduates will reach 5.59 million nationally, an increase of about 12.9 percent over the last year. But according to reports from human resources agencies, new employees' expectations in 2007 were still below 2,000 yuan a month.

Unlike average university students, graduates from elite colleges (mostly those among the "State 211 project," the nation's largest education project for top universities) are more confident and lucky as their average median pay half a year after employment is 2,500 yuan, 500 yuan more than those from ordinary universities, a survey conducted by Gallup China showed.

Graduates from Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiaotong University and Beijing Foreign Studies University earn most in the country for half a year of employment after graduation as their average median salaries all reach 4,000 yuan.

The survey also found 86 percent of the graduates in Beijing choose cities above provincial capitals as their top working destination, and the most-wanted job areas are still Beijing and Tianjin and the cities around south and east coastline.

The survey was conducted among 1,084 colleges and universities all over the country.

(China Daily January 3, 2008)