Han Wei: Uphold and Apply the Systems View [1] to Promote High-Quality Employment
Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, General Secretary Xi Jinping has repeatedly emphasized the importance of persisting in systems thinking, consistently treating it as a guiding methodology for developing the various undertakings of the Party and the state. The Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Comprehensively Deepening Reform and Advancing Chinese-path Modernization proposed to "improve the mechanism for promoting high-quality and full employment" and "perfect the employment support system for key groups such as college graduates, migrant workers, and retired military personnel."
High-level Planning and Top-level Design
Employment work is a vital task for universities in cultivating builders and successors of socialism [1]; it carries the important mission of guiding graduates to establish a correct outlook on employment, inspiring university students to make career choices centered around the overall development of the country, and ensuring they walk in the same direction as national development. It is a complex systemic task. Universities should persist in the systems concept, apply systemic methods, implement the fundamental task of fostering virtue through education [2] (lideshu ren), and coordinately plan "employment education" (jiuye yuren) alongside high-quality development. The employment of university graduates concerns national strategic needs and the people’s livelihood; it is a systemic project that reflects the political, people-centered, and strategic attributes of education. The status of its various components within the system's development is uneven; certain elements exert a major influence or even a decisive role. Therefore, employment work must firmly establish a "Great Employment Outlook" [3], strengthen top-level design, and analyze, coordinate, and plan by linking all aspects together.
As the foundational platform for talent cultivation, academic disciplines and majors play a fundamental and pioneering role, serving as the core pillars for constructing an autonomous system for high-quality talent cultivation. Universities must focus on "cultivating talent and meeting social needs." Driven by national strategic requirements and adhering to the principles of "effective anticipation" and "effective matching," they should proactively layout emerging disciplines and those in urgent demand, improving the responsiveness and supply-demand alignment of discipline settings to high-quality development. The quality of discipline construction and graduate employment status should be used as important bases for resource allocation, benefit evaluation, and the optimization of discipline settings. The elements of employment education should be systematically incorporated into talent cultivation plans to comprehensively enhance students' professional literacy, innovative thinking, and employability, thereby constructing a high-quality system for employment education and services.
Constructing a "Great Great Ideopolitical" Framework for Employment Education
Employment education is not only an important strategy for achieving high-quality and full employment for graduates but also an inherent requirement for implementing the fundamental task of fostering virtue through education, profoundly affecting the scale and quality of student employment. Universities should comprehensively incorporate employment education and guidance into the ideological and political education system, achieving an organic integration between the value-leading role of ideopolitical education and the practical orientation of employment guidance. While cultivating employability, ideopolitical education should guide students to establish active and correct views on personal success, career, and employment, ensuring they fully consider national development strategies and social needs in their career choices. It is necessary to strengthen the cultivation of teachers' ideopolitical education capabilities and improve their understanding and application of the "Great Ideopolitical" (da sizheng) [4] concept. Professional teachers should be guided to deeply mine the ideopolitical elements within specialized courses and organically combine them with employment guidance to form a synergy in employment education.
Constructing a Scientific Employment Curriculum System
The construction of an employment curriculum system serves as a vital support for innovation in employment work and plays a foundational role in university employment efforts. As the most basic unit of education, the curriculum system can systematically integrate core competencies with course content and teaching practice, providing a path for students' comprehensive development. Universities should organically integrate career planning and employment education into professional course teaching, guiding students to establish correct views on choosing and entering careers, realizing professional value in ordinary positions, and ensuring that self-growth resonates at the same frequency as the grand blueprint for a powerful nation. The construction of employment courses must target the characteristics of specific disciplines, combine local socio-economic development and regional needs, and center on improving employability through teaching, research, and practical activities. Employment internships, pedagogical internships, and social practices should be coordinated. It is essential to continuously improve the educational effectiveness of employment courses and create a system of high-quality "boutique" employment curriculum clusters.
Constructing a High-Level Team of Employment Guidance Faculty
To do a good job in graduate employment, focus must be placed on transforming faculty strengths into high-quality guidance outcomes. Universities need to establish a high-quality, professionalized, and innovative team of employment guidance teachers that meets the requirements of the New Era, with full-time teachers as the mainstay, supplemented by part-time teachers from both inside and outside the university, and involving all faculty and staff. Since the work graduates engage in after university is highly correlated with their majors, academic teachers and industry experts should be encouraged to form "dual-mentor" teams to conduct integrated education and teaching. This involves the integrated design of the "first, second, and third classrooms" [5], driving teachers to incorporate academic research results and practical experience into classroom teaching to solidify students' innovation and entrepreneurship literacy. Universities can promote high-level innovation and employment guidance work by selecting "Master Employment Guidance Teachers" and creating "Master Studios," providing platforms for teachers with outstanding professional capabilities and significant teaching achievements.
Constructing a Goal-Oriented Employment Incentive System
Incentives stimulate internal motivation and encourage individuals to take action toward desired goals. Full-time employment guidance personnel should extensively collect information on industry and regional talent demand to guide graduates toward serving regional socio-economic development. The leading role of competitions should be fully utilized—using competitions to promote teaching and learning—deeply integrating competitive activities with course content and practical training. Teachers should be encouraged to lead students in innovation and entrepreneurship competitions. Models of faculty guidance and student entrepreneurship should be established, and graduates who actively commit themselves to employment or entrepreneurship in key fields, key industries, urban and rural grassroots levels, and small and medium-sized enterprises should be rewarded.
Constructing a Warm and Targeted Support System
Constructing an all-around employment support system is a key measure for university graduates. "Warm" targeted support should not only satisfy the needs of policy briefings and skill guidance but should also provide early care and tracking based on students' actual situations. During the freshman stage, entrance education and situational education should focus on awakening students' career awareness; during the sophomore and junior stages, through professional knowledge and practice, students should be helped to build reserves for their future careers; during the senior stage, continuous attention should be paid to employment dynamics, accurately grasping students' intentions and "taking the pulse" of the situation. Targeted guidance services should be provided through alumni mixers and visits to key employers. A "work ledger" (taizhang) [6] for employment assistance for key groups should be established to track employment status and provide precise job recommendations. Great importance must be placed on the growth and employment of key groups; for students experiencing "slow employment" (man jiuye) [7] or non-employment, proactive communication and forward-leaning guidance are required. Guidance personnel should not act as mere "microphones" or "second-hand passers" of information; they must fully analyze information and provide specific "tips" and advice to students. Government departments should improve the mechanisms for employment support, enhance public service capabilities, guide graduates to establish "sentiments for home and country" (jiaguo qinghuai) [8], and encourage them to return to their hometowns for employment and entrepreneurship.
Constructing a Perfected Employment Institutional System
Attaching importance to institutional construction is an important understanding and conclusion drawn by our Party from long-term historical experience. Constructing a perfected employment institutional system is crucial for advancing employment work with high quality. The Ministry of Education has proposed that localities and universities abandon single-dimension evaluation orientations and move toward institutionalization and standardization. In recent years, universities across the country have fully implemented the decisions of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, placing employment work at the core as a "Top-Leader Project" (yibashou gongcheng) [9]. However, evaluations of graduate employment have focused more on the employment rate, with insufficient reflection on dimensions such as employment quality, career development, and major-job matching. Therefore, while observing quantitative data, the long-term career development of graduates—one, three, or even five years after graduation—should be included in the scope of evaluation, building a more diverse and scientific institutional system for graduate employment.
In conclusion, the employment of university graduates is a vital link in the university's cultivation of builders and successors of socialism. It is a complex systemic task that must integrate systemic, holistic, and global concepts into the employment work system. Closely centering on the fundamental task of fostering virtue through education, we must grasp socio-economic needs and future trends, examine the working principles and connection methods of various elements of university employment work, handle the relationship between employment education and high-quality employment coordinately, and ensure that tasks are implemented with precision and detail (luoshi luoxi). This will provide a steady stream of high-quality talent for Chinese-path modernization.
(The author is the Vice President of Inner Mongolia Normal University)
Source: Guangming Daily
February 7, 2025
Web Editor: Huihui