Official : All college graduates in Tibet this year find jobs

All of the 16,600 college students graduating in Tibet this year have found jobs, local officials said Saturday, which marks a significant contrast to the tough employment market in inland provinces that has left many graduates jobless. The full employment rate of college graduates, compared to an average of 84 percent from 2006 to 2010, was the result of the Tibetan government's ramped-up efforts to expand the employment market for educated young people. This year the government started to offer cash incentives to graduates who were employed by private businesses and promised to reimburse university fees or write off student loans for graduates who work in the private sector for more than five years, officials said. Tibet autonomous region has six universities and junior colleges. Graduates, mostly ethnic Tibetans, in the past largely landed in stable government posts or stayed unemployed and waited for such vacancies. Tibet only reformed its higher education system in 2006. Before then, each of the university students was assigned a job upon graduation, a cradle-to-grave social system abolished in other parts of China in the 1990s. Officials said they also encouraged college graduates to work in inland provinces by holding job fairs that were attended by more than 100 businesses from wealthy coastal regions such as Guangdong, Fujian, and Zhejiang. Tibet's current gross enrollment rate stands at 23.4 percent, slightly lower than the national average of 26.5 percent. The government is planning to raise the higher education gross enrollment rate in Tibet to 30 percent in less than five years, meaning that three out of every 10 Tibetan students will enter college by 2015, educational officials previously said.