Employability and Entrepreneurship of Chinese University Students in the Massification of Higher Education: A Perspective of Agency and Self-Formation

The massification of China’s higher education has brought university students’ employment issues to the center of educational policy discourse. In order to solve the employment issues, the Chinese government has implemented an application-oriented reform to improve university students’ employability. In this reform, education for innovation and entrepreneurship has been promoted as a significant remedy for the employment issues brought by the massification of higher education. However, its effectiveness still needs investigation. From an agency perspective, entrepreneurship education is self-formation and agency-oriented, which is largely against China’s education practices.

This presentation will take a student-oriented view to examine students’ self-formation in terms of employment. Through a case review on young entrepreneurs’ experiences in Shenzhen, this presentation aims to put forward the arguments on the challenges and future development of university students’ employability-related self-formation in China’s higher education.