Unemployment and Underemployment? An Empirical Exploration of Transnational Higher Education Graduates’ Capacity to Aspiration

Graduates employment has become an increasingly heated topic among policy makers, university administrators, employers, parents and graduates themselves. The changing nature of higher education, from public good to private commodity, and the essential role of qualified labor in economic growth have jointly compelled different stakeholders to promote employment rate. While existing research concentrates more on disciplinary based quantitative exploration, arguing the mismatch between employees’ skills and employers’ demand and social inequality due to candidates’ differentiated family background, this study, from interdisciplinary perspective, aims to explore the influencing factors on graduates’ employment choice making, that is, their capacity to aspiration. It combines both conceptual framework establishment and empirical data drawn from one Chinese Sino-foreign cooperation university.