Why Are The High-educated Undergoing Structural Dislocation?

Generally, researches in the field of social structure are based on a basic pointthat the composition parts of the society are seen as a whole. By studying therelationships among each part, social integration can be achieved. While sociologicalstudies notice a special form of the social structure, in which the social structure isconstituted by expected structure and realistic structure. Through the conformance orseparation of the two, the state of the society can be reflected. Conformance of theexpected structure and realistic structure represents that the society is stable, whileseparation represents changing or unrest. However, the expected structure andrealistic structure in a certain period of time are determined by the relationshipsamong the actual components of the social structure. Therefore，studies of theexpected structure and realistic structure cannot be done without analyzing the actualsocial structure. In this perspective, structural dislocation of the high-educated in ourcountry is studied in the paper.Firstly, through investigating the expected structure and realistic structure in theemployment process of the high-educated, the author pointed out that there is animbalance between the occupational structure and educational structure. Socialexpectations reflect that the high-educated should get white-collar jobs, while theemployment of them is flowing to blue-collar jobs. And the rate of job-off aftergraduated in the high-educated is increasing.Then, a further review of the occupational structure and educational structure’sdeveloping process since the Reform and Opening up is done through analyzing thecensus data, and shows that there is a non-synchronical development between ouroccupational structure and educational structure. Specifically, the upgrade process ofeducational structure is much faster than that of the occupational structure. Especiallythe higher education is growing rapidly in the recent decade, while the occupationalstructure is developing gradually, and remains relatively stable, which cannot admitsuch a great quantity of high-educated graduates. Furthermore, the paper argues thatthe non-synchronical development of occupational structure and educational structure causes their asymmetry in morphology, then results a structural extrusion effect,which leads to irregular streaming of the high-educated, including down flowing inemployment, to obtain higher academic qualifications and to receive vocationaleducation.Finally, possible impacts of structural dislocation are analyzed, and somefurther considerations are discussed then.