The news comes as 2.12 million graduates - a record number - flood an employment market rocked by SARS, which closed many job fairs and made face-to-face interviews impossible.

According to Lin Huiqing, head of the ministry's student department, up to 60 percent of students - the same percentage as last year - are expected to find jobs by early or mid July, when they all leave university.

The ministries of education, personnel, labour and social security and the Communist Youth League of China are now working together to help graduates get jobs.

More than 300,000 graduates have registered at the www.myjob.edu.cn website, established by the Ministry of Education earlier this month to help link students with employers.

From June 18 to 24, an online job fair was held on the website, attracting 2,150 employers and 37 million internet hits.

According to Lu Yongzheng, director of the centre for volunteers' activities under the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China, the campaign to encourage college graduates to work in the country's western regions, launched earlier this month, has proven popular.

"Go West"

The government's call for college graduates to work in the west region on a voluntary basis has attracted 43,763 applicants from across the country.

The applicants included 31,453 recent graduates from three-year colleges, 12,276 graduates from regular colleges and universities, and 34 post-graduate students.

The Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China and the Ministry of Education jointly launched a program early this month to recruit up to 6,000 young volunteers to move to the west of the country and help develop impoverished regions.

The graduates will be sent to impoverished western regions to work in such fields as education, health, agricultural science, poverty reduction and youth work management, for one to two years.

After their voluntary terms, graduates will be free to choose whether to continue to work in the west or seek opportunities in other regions of the country.

As the number of applicants has far exceeded the scheduled recruitment, the office in charge of the application work closed applications before the scheduled date of June 30.

The final list of volunteers will be announced around July 1.

Meanwhile, authorities have launched a training programme for graduates from higher-education vocational institutes, according to Liu Kang, vice-director of the employment department under the Ministry of Labour and Social Security.

Currently, only 30 per cent of graduates from such institutes have signed contracts with employers.

The programme, running from late this month till September, will include technical training and certification. It mainly targets graduates in big and medium-sized cities which are home to many higher-education vocational institutes.

(People's Daily June 28, 2003)