Somebody on Facebook recently shared this latest article with me. Titled Smart, Young, and Broke, the article spoke of how a growing number of Chinese graduates are coming to gripes with the fact that despite being pushed a certain educational direction, in a direction of almost ensured success, they’re quickly becoming left out in the cold. This is something I had theorized was the next step in social unrest for China. It’s now the uneducated and the educated that toil a difficult life. It has so often been the running joke that Asian parents had always pushed their kids towards some sort of white collar vocation as a means to guaranteed success. But quickly this seems to be easier said than done. It doesn’t require any difficult computation to realize that if you send the masses off to a certain designation, the end result will be a glut of that designation meaning greater competition, lower wages and more difficulty in finding a job.

While Jimmy Scientist, Michael Doctor or Winston Programmer endure hardships in finding a job, there is a silver lining, albeit they aren’t necessarily the ones to enjoy it. It’s true that being in medicine ain’t no joke cause it really isn’t, but if you’re pushing out class after class of doctors, the market will get flooded. The world can always use more doctors, the world can also use more scientific developments. What the likes of China have effectively done is widened the pool of competent and knowledgeable personnel through many industries (maybe I shouldn’t generalize as I don’t have numbers?). As these new incoming graduates take over new jobs (when they can find them) or more jobs of this nature are created, the spill-off is abundantly clear. While throwing 10x as many scientists into the mix doesn’t yield 10x as many discoveries, it’s safe to say you’ll get something in return.

For somebody who wants programming work done, no longer do you need to rely on only a handful of people capable of the work like n the past where they commanded exorbitant sums. You have your pick of the litter from crowd sourcing sites featuring many a Chinese programmer looking to grind it out.

Of course this article isn’t calling out people that looked to pick a white collar vocation for an easier job, but it’s simply presenting the flipside of it.

-Eugene