Emphasis on job selection for Chinese male college students is on career prospects while women say they want to center their plans on places where satisfactory husbands will be easy to find, a survey says.

The survey was conducted in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province by six students from the School of Literature at Southeast University. The team consisted of two sophomores, two juniors and two seniors.

According to Jiao Yanwu, a junior who was the team leader, the investigation found that most students had similar choices for cities, enterprises and salaries.

For example, some 70 percent of students hope to work in Yangtze River Delta cities, and more than half chose cities like Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou.

However, 43 percent of male students regard individual development as the most important point in choosing their jobs, while 39 percent chose salary and 24 percent chose place.

They said they made such a choice because they believe they will have to take on heavy responsibilities for supporting their families in the future, the students wrote in the survey results.

Forty percent of the young women students said that they would first think of both the salary and living standards in the workplace, while 37 percent chose individual development. And, 22 percent chose the convenience of finding Mr. Right as a high priority.

The survey team found that female students paid more attention to comfort and ease in their lives, hoping to toil in work venues that will attract excellent young men and be convenient in allowing them to find future husbands.

"As a female student, I can understand the result of the investigation," said Peng Jie, a senior at the university who read about the results in a local newspaper.

"To choose a comfortable job with an ordinary salary is just OK for some girls," she said. "What they need more is an excellent husband, since social competition is so fierce today."

The team spent four weekends sending out 4,500 questionnaires to students in different majors at more than 20 universities and colleges in the city during September and October, including Nanjing University, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing Agricultural University and Nanjing Forestry University.

Altogether, 4,386 questionnaires were collected, among which 3,979 were valid.

The team chose 3,709 questionnaires for analysis, 1,956 from male students and 1,753 from female students, all of whom were seniors, graduate students or doctoral students.

(China Daily November 24, 2004)