A Study On Overeducation In Higher Education

In 1976, Freeman raised the conception of over-education. Overeducation is that the labors have received the higher education than their work needs, and that the work productivity declines with not satisfied with the jobs. The overeducation phenomena mean that the development scale and speed of higher education exceed the requirement that the social and economic development need. And the relatively surplus of human resources appear. Along with the rapid growth of higher education in China, to learn from the research result about overeducation in western countries and strengthen the theoretical and positive study on overeducation in China shall be one of the most important fields in the studies on education policies.The concurrence of over-education and under-education means that there exist deep-seated factors in the appearance of overeducation in higher education. This paper summarizes and analyses the explanations of education economics about overeducation. The paper focuses on the structural characteristics and influences of overeducation in China's higher education, along with the basis of analyzing the policies and development of the education popularization in China. The overeducation in China doesn't mean the excess of economic growth in the gross amount of education, but the relative excess in the unreasonable structures in education.To study the resources of the rise of these structural unbalance in the whole, the structural overeducation reflects aspects of problem as follows. Firstly, the lack of investment to the specialized human capital in the subjects and majors of higher education. Secondly, the structural unbalance between the developments of ordinary education and occupational education. Thirdly, the channels through which the emerged signals of specialized skills of the worker transfer are not smooth in the labor markets. Fourthly, the social and economic differences between regions are the deep-seated reasons generating regional overeducation.As the overeducation of higher education appear, it's very important and necessary to create institutions and atmosphere that ability fully used. This paper presents that the scale of higher education should not be restricted. We ought to solve the overeducation problem from the viewpoint of adjusting the structure of higher education and strengthening the occupational needs. Based on this viewpoint, the paper raises the thoughts of Countermeasures from four aspects.