Higher Education Expansion in China and the ‘Ant Tribe’ Problem

College Enrolment Expansion policies have been implemented in China since 1999. Unfortunately, numbers of qualified teachers and the amount of educational funds input have not caught up with the pace of student intake. Even the curricula taught in colleges are outdated and work practice programmes are inefficient. As a result, new college graduates cannot meet the requirements of firms they wish to work for. Many graduates work in unskilled job positions with low pay. They are called the ‘Ant tribe’. We estimate that the accumulative number of persons in ‘Ant tribes’ had exceeded 3 million by 2010, and the corresponding cost to China’s annual GDP was over 0.22% in respect of effective labour input. Improvement in quality should take priority during the expansion of higher education.