The cutthroat nature of the gaokao, China’s college entrance examination, is well- documented. ②Every year, roughly 10 million Chinese students sit for a single two-day exam that essentially determines their future. ③If they test well they can get into the college of their dreams; if they test poorly, their options narrowdramatically — unless they opt to try their luck again the next year.
中国的高考的残酷性是有目共睹的。每年，大约有1000万中国学生参加为期两天的考试，这基本上决定了他们的未来。如果他们考得好，他们可以进入他们梦想的大学；如果他们考得不好，他们的选择就会大大缩小--除非他们选择在第二年再碰运气。
But what if I told you there was another test, even harder than the gaokao?
但是，如果我告诉你还有另一项考试，甚至比高考更难呢？
Now that undergraduate degrees are commonplace, students looking to distinguish themselves on the job market have shifted their focus from simply getting into college to getting into a top-tier university like Tsinghua or Peking University. ②Other students — including many who tested into middling universities on the gaokao — throw themselves into preparations for the postgraduate exam, seeing it as a second chance to prove themselves and get a leg up in the job hunt.
现在，本科学位已经很普遍，希望在就业市场上脱颖而出的学生已经将他们的关注点从简单地进入大学转向进入清华或北大这样的顶级大学。其他学生--包括许多在高考中考入中等大学的学生--则全身心投入到研究生考试的准备工作中，将其视为证明自己并在求职中获得优势的第二次机会。
China isn’t the first country to experience degree inflation. ②As has occurred elsewhere, the problem has been compounded by the state of the national economy and a tightening job market. The job market was tight before the pandemic, and its only gotten tighter in the years since. ④As college degrees become commonplace, companies are adopting new selection criteria. ⑤Demand for postgraduate degrees has exploded. Completing postgraduate studies to give oneself an upper hand on the job market is both more important and more difficult than ever before. Meanwhile, as postgraduate degrees become more and more ubiquitous, China faces a frustrating problem: an over-educated workforce.
中国并不是第一个经历学位通胀的国家。正如其他地方发生的情况一样，国家经济状况和紧缩的就业市场加剧了这一问题。在疫情之前，就业市场就已经很紧张了，而在此后的几年里，就业市场只会变得更加紧张。随着大学学位变得越来越普遍，公司正在采用新的选择标准。对研究生学位的需求激增。完成研究生学业，使自己在就业市场上占上风，这比以往任何时候都更重要，也更困难。与此同时，随着研究生学位越来越普及，中国面临着一个令人沮丧的问题: 受教育程度过高的劳动力。
Simply put, over-education is when an individual’s education exceeds the requirements for their job. On an individual level, over-education means that we benefit less from attending school and are less satisfied with the jobs our degrees qualify us for; at the social level, over-education represents a tremendous waste of human capital investment.
简单地说，过度教育是指一个人的教育程度超过了他们工作的要求。在个人层面上，过度教育意味着我们从上学中获得的好处较少，并且对我们的学位所能胜任的工作不太满意；在社会层面上，过度教育代表着对人力资本投资的巨大浪费。
Previously, China’s economic transformation and the resulting need for better educated workers helped absorb the supply of university graduates and to an extent alleviated the problem of over-education. However, as economic growth slows down, so too will the growth of jobs for highly educated graduates. By the time today’s postgrads complete their studies, having a postgraduate degree will be even less of a guarantee of good employment than it was when they enrolled.
以前，中国的经济转型和由此产生的对受过良好教育的工人的需求有助于吸收大学毕业生的供应，并在一定程度上缓解了过度教育的问题。然而，随着经济增长放缓，受过高等教育的毕业生的工作岗位增长也会放缓。当今天的研究生完成他们的学业时，拥有研究生学位将比他们入学时更不能保证有好的就业机会。
In China, however, education bears immense cultural significance. The default mindset is still the more educated one is, no matter one’s field, the better. It is for this reason that the expansion of education has been so extensive: people are willing to strive for higher education even if there’s little to no payoff. If this mindset doesn’t change, China’s over-education problem will only get worse.
然而，在中国，教育具有巨大的文化意义。人们的默认心态仍然是一个人受教育程度越高越好，无论他的领域是什么。正是因为这个原因，教育的扩张才如此广泛：人们愿意为更高的教育而努力，即使没有什么回报。如果这种心态不改变，中国的过度教育问题只会越来越严重。
在考研这条越来越“卷”的赛道上，“缩招”无异于当头泼下一盆冷水。冷水之后，是再次向自己发问：如果考研越来越难，那么还要不要继续走这条路？是顶风向前“狭路相逢勇者胜”，还是后撤一步“亦有柳暗花明处”？
有人说“缩招落到自己头上就是100%”，这句话似乎是在说，所有事发生的概率都只有100%和0%。那么，为考研付出的努力又算什么呢？我们拼尽全力，或许，也是为了那哪怕微不足道的0.1%的进步。
参考来源：软科、高校聚焦等
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