Understanding Employment Opportunities and Challenges Facing Lao Graduates from Chinese Universities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32674/jcihe.v12i6S1.2979Abstract
The purpose of this study is to explore the employment opportunities and challenges facing Lao graduates who studied abroad in China and returned home after graduation. A qualitative method was employed by utilizing semi-structured interviews with 17 Chinese-educated Lao graduates who now live in Laos. The findings revealed that although returning graduates were sought after in the local labor market, they seemed more employable in certain market segments in which China has been economically involved. Yet possessing a foreign degree alone was not sufficient to attain jobs unless it was complemented with foreign language fluency and employability skills such as communication skills and learning skills. The study also found that returning graduates tended to experience job mismatch and reverse culture shock in the process of their career development. With these findings, universities should sufficiently equip students with skills that can be effectively applied in different labor markets and contexts.
References
Creswell, J. W. (2013). Qualitative inquiry & research design: Choosing among five approaches (3rd ed.). SAGE.
Hotta, T. (2020). The development of “Asian Academic Credits” as an aligned credit transfer system in Asian higher education. Journal of Studies in International Education, 24(2), 167–189. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315318822797
Kuroda, K., Sugimura, M., Kitamura, Y., & Asada, S. (2018). Paper commissioned for the 2019 global education monitoring report, migration, displacement and education: Building bridges, not walls – Internationalization of higher education and student mobility in Japan and Asia. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.https://www.jica.go.jp/jica-ri/publication/other/l75nbg000010mg5u-att/Background_Kuroda.pdf
Lee, J. J., & Kim, D. (2010). Brain gain or brain circulation? U.S. doctoral recipients returning to South Korea. Higher Education, 59(5), 627–643. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-009-9270-5
Li, Z. (2017). International students’ employability: What can we learn from it? In M. Tomlinson, & L. Holmes (Eds.), Graduate employability in context: Theory, research and debate (pp. 195-211). Palgrave Macmillan.
Ministry of Education (MOE). (2019). Statistical report on international students in China for 2018. MOE, China.
http://en.moe.gov.cn/documents/reports/201904/t20190418_378692.html
Nghia, T. L. H. (2019). Motivations for studying abroad and immigration intentions: The case of Vietnamese students. Journal of International Students, 9(3), 758–776. https://doi.org/10.32674/jis.v0i0.731
Saldana, J. (2013). The coding manual for qualitative researchers (2nd ed.). SAGE.
Srivastava, P., & Hopwood, N. (2009). A practical iterative framework for qualitative data analysis. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 8(1), 76–84. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940690900800107
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). (2019). Total outbound internationally mobile tertiary students studying abroad, all countries, both sexes (number). http://data.uis.unesco.org/Index.aspx?queryid=172
Downloads
Published
Versions
- 2021-02-05 (3)
- 2021-02-05 (2)
- 2021-02-05 (1)
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2020 Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The findings, interpretations, conclusions, and views expressed in Journal of Comparative and International Higher Education (JCIHE) are entirely those of the authors and should not be attributed in any manner to CIES, HESIG, or the sponsoring universities of the Editorial Staff. These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License. Readers are free to copy, display, and distribute articles that appear in JCIHE as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and JCIHE, it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. All other uses must be approved by the author(s) or JCIHE. By submitting a manuscript, authors agree to transfer without charge the following rights to JCIHE upon acceptance of the manuscript: first worldwide serial publication rights and the right for JCIHE to grant permissions as its editors judge appropriate for the redistribution of the article, its abstract, and metadata associated with the article in professional indexing and reference services.
