Study On The Career Development Of College-Graduate Village Officials

The College-graduate Village Officials Plan is an important strategic decision made by the Party Central Committee. It is practically meaningful for alleviating graduate’s pressure in finding jobs; promoting the construction of new socialist countryside; and addressing various problems in relation to countryside, agriculture and farmers. Since the’Young Eagle Project" proposed by Jiangsu Province in 1995, the College-graduate Village Officials Plan has sequentially experienced three historical processes:partial research, comprehensive launch, and further deepening. After several years’exploration, the implementation of College-graduate Village Officials Plan has gradually become increasingly mature. However, it has recently become a common practice for college-graduate village officials to resign their work after the contract. In terms of the career development of college-graduate village officials after their contracts, the options of them are quite limited under the national macro policy guidance. The non-farmer, non-officer and non-civil-servant identities of college-graduate village officials make them quite confused when determining their own future career. Furthermore, some college-graduate village officials even feel fear for their future career, because during the three or five years’ work experience, they play a limited role or have limited self-cognition under the effects of various constraints. Therefore, to certain extent, the wide occurrence of college-graduate village officials’job transfer or resign had negatively affected to effectiveness of the College-graduate Village Officials Plan.By using the college-graduate village officials at Zhangjiagang (an eastern coastal city in Jiangsu Province) as example, and cooperating with local government, this study acquires the first-hand data about the basic conditions of college-graduate village officials at Zhangjiagang. By sampling, questionnaire survey and analysis of survey results, this study is able to get insight into the real conditions regarding the career development of college-graduate village officials at Zhangjiagang,and combining the in-depth investigation which is based on case interview,reflecting the working conditions, existing problems as well as real demands of college-graduate village officials at Zhangjiagang, thereby analysing and interpreting the information from the perspective of optimizing basic public service management.To address the career development issues of college-graduate village officials, which result from ambiguous positioning, incomplete policies and personal incompetency, this study analysed the factors that constrain the career development of college-graduate village officials from the perspectives of policy, society and individual, and proposed some solutions. In the first place, the recruitment requirements of college-graduate village officials should be improved. To achieve this, on one hand, then total number of college-graduate village officials should be controlled based on the distribution condition in Zhangjiagang; on the other hand, the government should recruit those well-qualified candidates who are sincerely willing to serve for the development of countryside, and this will fundamentally resolve the issue of infirm faith among college-graduate village officials; in the second place, government should enhance the guiding education in terms of both faith and capacity. This can be achieved via directional training that is implemented by government and partnering universities; in the third place, government should perfect the cultivation mechanism of college-graduate village officials to categorically cultivate them. This helps explore the role transformation from outstanding college-graduate village officials to government executives, thereby widening their carder development and ultimately realizing the healthy and orderly development of college-graduate village officials.