Manifold benefits of a college degree

College is the best investment one can make. But if you look at the returns on Chinese higher education in monetary terms you might question this.

Graduates in 2011 earned a monthly income of 2,766 yuan ($434) or about 33,192 yuan for the year on average, a rise of 11.6 percent on the income of graduates in 2010, according to a report recently released by Mycos, an education consulting company.

As there is no official cost-benefit analysis of college education in China, I've checked with a dozen new graduates from colleges across the country that now have jobs. I found their four years of tuition, room and board cost anywhere from 80,000-120,000 yuan. The expenses for those that attended private colleges and the "independent" schools of public universities will be significantly higher, as these institutions charge several times more in tuition fees.

The investment should also include the opportunity cost - the wages forgone due to attending college - and the tens of thousands of yuan that parents have to pay for their kids grueling preparations for the gaokao, the all-important national college entrance examination. For Liu Fenlan, a mother in Beijing, these costs soared to more than 100,000 yuan this year, including 60,000 yuan in rent for a flat near the high school that her son attended, 21,600 yuan on private tuition and more than 10,000 yuan on "nutritious food" and "brain-enhancing" medicines.

It will take years for graduates to recover this money in wages. Almost all the graduates I talked to admitted with embarrassment that they would have to count on their families' support if they wanted to buy a home.

The issue of whether college was worth it is even more debatable for those graduates who have yet to find a job or who have low job satisfaction. The Mycos study estimated that last year, 570,000 new graduates were jobless, with another 700,000 in part-time jobs unrelated to their training or with monthly incomes in the bottom 25 percent of the local pay scale.

However, the other side of the coin is, for most graduates and parents, there are also tangible and intangible returns that may not carry a price tag but are rewarding enough to justify investing in a college education.

Although a college degree doesn't guarantee a job, without it, one can only expect to land low-pay menial jobs. The government and large State-owned companies only employ degree holders. Successful candidates can count on a stable and respectable career with decent welfare and benefits that can include a pension, subsidized housing and a hukou, or household registration, in big cities that is considered to be the ultimate prize for college graduates from other areas, especially those from rural areas.

A few years ago, a survey found people believed a Beijing hukou, though not for sale, was worth the equivalent of 100,000-200,000 yuan, and when given the choice of an annual salary of 100,000 yuan or a Beijing hukou, fresh graduates would choose the latter because of the advantages it brought.

Besides, for many students from rural areas or poor urban families, college education remains their only ticket to success, and parents will make whatever financial sacrifice they can to put their children on the path of upward social mobility.

The value of a Chinese college education can be encapsulated in the words of the Beijing mother who spent the combined incomes of her family for a year to ensure her son entered a good college: "If even a college graduate cannot find a job, then there is no way forward for someone who didn't go to college."

The writer is editor-at-large of China Daily. E-mail: dr.baiping@gmail.com