Author: Xusheng source: Xusheng (official account id:lxlong20) has been reproduced with authorization
First of all, this topic is not selling anxiety, but describing and analyzing a phenomenon. It is also a matter of taking advantage of the college entrance examination these days to talk about this topic.
01 cold data
Data 1: graduates reached a new high.
According to the statistics of the Ministry of education, the number of college graduates in China will reach 10.76 million in 2022, which is the first time that the number of college graduates in China has exceeded 10 million.
This is not a simple ten million data, but a huge treasure house of human resources.
To be more intuitive, let’s take a data comparison. Greece, the 88th most populous country in the world, has a total population of 10.38 million, which is not comparable to the total number of graduates in China this year.
The 10 million highly educated people are a great wealth in any era, in any country and under any system. This is the talent that China will become a society in 2022.
But this year, the employment of college students has encountered great difficulties. At the beginning of this year, the director of the Department of college students of the Ministry of Education said at a press conference held by the Ministry of Education:
1. “At present, China’s economic development is facing triple pressures of shrinking demand, supply shock and weakening expectations, which will have an impact on employment.”
2. This year
The main objectives of the Ministry of education are
“
Make every effort to ensure the stability of the employment situation of 2022 college graduates.
”
It is obvious to all that employment is difficult this year. The most typical case is the Internet giant. In the past, it used to rob people with high salaries everywhere. This year, it has laid off workers one after another. Small and medium-sized enterprises are facing more difficulties due to the impact of the epidemic.
Many graduates from famous schools worry about employment. Why is this? Keep looking at the data.
Data 2: the financial pressure has greatly increased.
On June 2, the Ministry of Finance held a press conference to support the basic level of “Three Guarantees” (ensuring people’s livelihood, wages and operation). The director general of the budget department said: under the circumstances that the contradiction between fiscal revenue and expenditure is very prominent, this year the central government has transferred nearly 9.8 trillion yuan to local governments, an increase of about 1.5 trillion yuan over the previous year. Both the scale and growth rate are the largest over the years.
——In less than half a year, the central government’s transfer payments to local governments increased by $1.5 trillion. In other words, the lack of local finance reflects the sluggish economic situation and the difficult employment situation.
Data 3: in 2022, the number of college entrance examinations in China reached a record high, reaching 11.93 million.
How does this figure (11.93 million) reflect the involution?
Under normal circumstances, a person’s schooling process before the college entrance examination is 12 years (9 years of compulsory education plus 3 years of high school). If he goes to school at the age of seven, he is now about 19 years old, corresponding to his birth in 2003 (the interval is about 2002 to 2004).
You can take a look at the birth data of China in the 21st century.
At least two points can be seen from the above table:
1. The population born in 2003 was 15.99 million, most of whom (11.93 million) were in the college entrance examination this year, accounting for about 70%. This is a good thing. It means that everyone attaches importance to learning, and it also means that everyone is very introverted.
2. Judging from the birth trend, both graduates (10.76 million) and college entrance examination students (11.93 million) will be more than the total number of births this year; It means that the employment of graduates will remain a serious problem in many years to come.
Through the above three groups of data, it is easy to draw a conclusion: the employment volume is very large, and the college entrance examination is also very large.
Back to the title, since the employment volume is very high, why are we still keen on the college entrance examination?
There are three levels of answers:
1. The impermanence of individual destiny
2. Orientation of national policies
3. The cruelty of historical laws
02 destiny is changeable
Every young man has had the dream of “fresh clothes, angry horses and brave swords to the end of the world”.
However, how to change life against the sky? Successful learners will say that opportunities are needed.
For example, the opportunity for a noble person to help, at a certain moment, with someone’s help, soared to the sky. This is not to say that there is no such situation. In fact, many successful people have had the opportunity to help. But for most people, this can only exist in fantasy.
For example, grasp the opportunity of the tuyere, that is, the tuyere where pigs in many populations can fly to the sky. This kind of tuyere exists in every era, but for most people, they simply do not understand the signs of wind, and only look up at the sky after the wind rises.
For example, the chance of luck, such as winning the lottery.
This so-called opportunity is the marketing selling point of success. About ten years ago, the masters of successful learning and their books were very popular. However, in any age, the science of success is nothing but a dog’s skin plaster adsorbed on the winners, which has nothing to do with most people. So now the masters of successful learning and their books have cooled down.
For most people, fate is impermanent. There are three main reasons why reading is the most reliable way to change your destiny:
The first reason for studying is to enter a good university and seek a good career.
——This has become a common sense. More and more people recognize this common sense, so the college entrance examination is getting hotter and hotter.
Because everyone is accepting the fact that ordinary people have a great probability to change their destiny through ordinary ways. The college entrance examination is a relatively reliable option in all common ways to change fate.
Over the past few decades, countless young people have gone from rural areas to cities after passing the college entrance examination.
The second reason for reading is to understand the world and find your own position.
As I said before, there is a misconception about reading that knowledge can change destiny. In fact, only at certain moments can knowledge change destiny.
What really changes destiny is not knowledge, but cognition.
Again, knowledge can never change destiny, but cognition can change destiny.
It is more difficult to understand the world than to absorb knowledge. But it’s not easy to change your destiny, is it.
Generally speaking, as the competition for reading becomes more and more fierce, the probability of changing your destiny is also decreasing, which is also the reason why the topic of “it is difficult for a poor family to have a noble son” continues to be very hot.
But compared with other ways to change fate, reading is still relatively reliable. Because the college entrance examination, on the whole, is still very fair. It can even be said that it is one of the most fair fields today.
03 policy baton
After the math test this year, many candidates cried and said it was too difficult. Some people say that the difficulty this year has exceeded that in 2003 (the one 19 years ago), becoming the second after China resumed the college entrance examination, second only to that in 1984 (the one 38 years ago).
How difficult was mathematics in the 1984 college entrance examination? The full score is 120 points, 72 points pass, and the national average score of candidates is 26 points; In some provinces, the average score is only 17; It is said that the average score of mathematics in Beijing was 19. It is conceivable that the examinees at that time were so crushed. Under normal circumstances, the difficulty of mathematics in the college entrance examination will not exceed that in 1984.
Back to the national policy level, China’s college entrance examination can be said to be the strongest policy baton in history.
The brilliant achievements China has made in the past decades of reform and opening up are rooted in the selection of a large number of talents in the college entrance examination.
The college entrance examination in China has generally gone through the following three stages.
The first stage, from 1977 to 1996, is the planning stage, with the following characteristics:
1. Fewer candidates participated.
2. The number of students admitted is small.
3. The acceptance rate is low.
4. Package allocation.
——Before 1996, the biggest feature of China’s college entrance examination was the distribution of all students.
Since 1996, the state has promulgated the Interim Measures of the state for non guaranteed employment of college graduates and above, laying the foundation for graduate reform. Since 1998, large-scale college graduates have no longer been assigned. By 2000, the system of lump sum distribution had been completely stopped. College graduates follow the principle of marketization and go to the society to find jobs by themselves.
During the corresponding period (from 1996 to 2000), great changes have taken place in Chinese society. Another remarkable social reform in the same period was the opening of the real estate commercialization cycle, which set off the most magnificent real estate bull market in human history.
The core selling point of real estate is school district housing.
In a sense, the college entrance examination is the core fulcrum of real estate, so the simultaneous launching of the marketization of the two is a perfect match.
Since 1997, the college entrance examination has entered the second stage, that is, the market-oriented stage, with the following characteristics:
1. The total number of people taking the college entrance examination has increased year by year. Ten years later, in 2007, it exceeded the ten million mark.
2. The number of students admitted has risen sharply, breaking the million mark unprecedented and growing rapidly.
3. The admission rate increased significantly.
Why do I divide the marketization stage of the college entrance examination into 2010?
In fact, 2010 is very important in the history of China’s reform and opening up. Because China’s GDP exceeded that of Japan that year, which was an important symbol of China’s industrialization.
At that time, the whole world was hit by the 2008 financial crisis. It is not easy for China to take the lead in getting rid of the crisis and continue to develop at a high speed.
The third stage of the college entrance examination, from 2011 to now, is the internal examination paper stage.
The biggest feature of this stage is that the number of college entrance examinations, admission numbers and admission rates are approaching historical highs. Taking 2021 as an example, the admission rate reached an astonishing 92.89%.
Of course, this admission rate includes secondary vocational students and students from higher vocational colleges to higher vocational colleges. It is not an ordinary college entrance examination in the traditional sense. If we only talk about the general undergraduate enrollment, the general undergraduate enrollment in 2021 will be 4.446 million, with an enrollment rate of about 41.6%, which is still very high.
This situation can have both positive and negative effects.
The downside is:
When the economic situation is bad (like this year), there will be a surplus of talents.
The surplus of talents will lead to employment involution.
The upside is:
The comprehensive quality of Chinese people has been improved through the expansion of educated groups.
The final result of national rejuvenation must be the substantial improvement of the overall quality of the Chinese people.
Therefore, from the perspective of national policies, we will certainly make every effort to let more people receive higher education, and the guiding role of the policy baton will not change.
04 historical cruelty
Finally, let’s talk about it from a historical perspective.
Education is not only available now, nor is the selection of talents through examinations. It has existed since ancient times.
Of course, in the imperial era, imperial examinations were conducted, and in essence, talents were selected. But in the imperial era, at the beginning of each dynasty, the imperial examination was relatively easy, and then it became more and more esoteric.
In fact, the reason is very simple. In the early days of the dynasty, there was a big reshuffle and a strong demand for talents. As the situation of the dynasty calms down, there will soon be a surplus of talents, which will lead to the failure of the imperial examination. Therefore, the roles of “Fan Jin” and “kongyiji” will appear.
The root of talent surplus lies in the fact that the economy has reached the ceiling.
Why did the economy of the imperial era reach the ceiling so easily? It is because the imperial era was in the stage of agricultural civilization.
According to the big cycle law of three-dimensional historical view, the scientific and technological ceiling of agricultural civilization is very low, which determines the low economic ceiling; As a result, the selection of talents in the imperial examination can easily evolve into internal examination.
This is the cruelty of history.
What is more cruel is that the way of selecting talents in the imperial examination failed to break the shackles of the technology and economic ceiling, which eventually led to the Chinese Empire falling behind in modern times and the great powers becoming weak in the face of the cycle of industrial civilization. Therefore, in the late Qing Dynasty, the mode of selecting talents by imperial examination was eliminated and replaced by the transition to the modern university selection system.
During the war in the Republic of China, although there were some good universities (such as the Southwest Associated University), most Chinese did not have the opportunity to receive education.
In the Republic era, one of the basic state policies was to engage in industrialization. To achieve this strategic goal, we must let more Chinese people receive education, which has become a basic national policy. However, in the first 30 years, due to complex historical reasons, the system of selecting talents through the college entrance examination was not perfect, and it was interrupted for a long time.
In essence, the college entrance examination talent selection system was not finally perfected until the era of reform and opening up (note, what we are talking about here is perfection). After decades of development, with the deepening of China’s industrialization, the problem of talent surplus has surfaced.
According to the three-dimensional historical view, the essence of talent surplus is the emergence of the technology ceiling, which leads to the emergence of the economic ceiling.
In the industrial civilization cycle, the reason why the economy can develop continuously lies in the fact that the science and technology ceiling only Looms but is not finalized.
If the technology ceiling is determined, then all industrialized countries will encounter huge problems. The crisis of talent surplus will be difficult to solve. The cruel historical law once again leads the general.
If the technology ceiling is only a shadow, and the modern talent selection system can successfully break this shadow and push the upper limit of the high-tech ceiling, the talent surplus crisis will be naturally resolved. The cruel laws of history will be postponed.
However, no matter how history progresses, the popularity of the college entrance examination will not decline in the foreseeable future.
