Compelled to Compete: Chinese graduates on employment and social mobility after international and domestic study

The Impact of Place of Origin on International and Domestic Graduates’ Mobility in China

“…For example, Faggian, McCann, and Sheppard (2007) show that graduate women in the UK "use migration as a means of partially compensating for gender differences in the ease of accessing labor markets" (p. 538). Indeed, previous research (He and Wu 2017) and our own interview results suggest that women graduates are systematically discriminated against within China's labor market (Zhai, Moskal, and Read 2021). In interviews, both domestic and international graduates shared their observations of gender disparities in their employment.…”

“…Despite the termination of hukou conversion control (rural hukou can be converted into urban hukou) in China after the 1978 reform (Liang and Ma 2004), it remains very difficult to obtain hukou of China's largest cities. Without it, however, some graduates are reluctant to live and work in these cities, due to their low chances of developing successful careers (Zhai, Moskal, and Read 2021). Although both domestic and international graduates represented so-called high-end talents (Mok et al 2017), China's current labor market has established two separate pathways for the different types of graduates.…”

“…The clustered pattern of domestic graduates' residence was particularly significant in cities around the Bohai Economic Rim and the Yangtze River Delta. Many domestic graduates chose these areas because they offered less working pressure and social competition (Zhai, Moskal, and Read 2021). In comparison to most students who graduated from international universities, domestic graduates had less advantaged family backgrounds (Mok et al 2017).…”

“…In interviews, both domestic and international graduates shared their observations of gender disparities in their employment. Specifically, all women international graduates were dissatisfied with their current career development, explicitly connecting their dissatisfaction with issues of gender inequality (Zhai, Moskal, and Read 2021). Increased spatial employment mobility among international graduate women as a way to identify better career opportunities would be a rational response to such discrimination (Faggian, McCann, and Sheppard 2007).…”

The “Custrac Model”: Its Generic Practicality with a Twist in the Ghanaian Education

“…This study capitalizes on the rulebooks of cognitive dissonance theory to further our understanding of strategic relationship marketing stratagems on how to attract students in the context of Ghanaian education. A critical look at some of the scholarly works revealed that certain dimensions of institution service quality can equally be viewed as strategic relationship marketing stratagems (Zahia et al, 2021) thus having the ability to attract students thus reducing dissonance, but it's (Kirimi, 2021) sustainability remains questionable. Some scholars share the opinion that accessibility in terms of the ease of contact and the approachability of university management (Brown, 2021) to a large extent can be used to attract more students.…”