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Degrees in hand, young professionals are heading back to school, but this time for trade skills.
With job markets shifting, let's explore why more workers are adding hands on expertise to their academic critical credentials.
And whether is hiring someone to climb a mountain with you or to assemble the latest Lego set.
Stand in Economy is booming.
Stay tuned to find out why.
Coming to you live from Beijing, this is Roundtable.
I'm heyoung.
For today's program, I'm joined by Steve Hatherley and Yu Shan.
First on today's show, the value of a four year college degree is once again under scrutiny.
Degree inflation, when degrees lose their impact as more people attain higher education, makes it tough for graduates to stand out.
Often called degree devaluation or depreciation, this trend has surprisingly led some workers to skip master's degrees and instead pursue vocational training for practical skills and trade certification.
Why are young professionals pivoting to trade schools for career security?
And let's go to you first, Yu Xian.
So why are we seeing this happen?
I think the main reason lies in one phrase you just mentioned, Heyang, which is degree inflation.
Because when we hear inflation, it's actually a term that's closely related to the law of supply and demand because as the supply of something increase, the value decreases.
So the same theory applies to the job or rather the labor market nowadays.
So it was reported by the Xinhua news agency that last year the number of college graduates in 2020, well, it's estimated that in 2024 the number of college graduates is well expected to reach nearly 11.8 million.