One third of young people with a tertiary degree from China by 2020?

By Marielk. There is a widespread assumption of the developed parts of the world being on the forefront of development and innovation – with occasional warnings of up-and-coming countries. However, when examining where the largest number of graduates is going to be by 2020, the image looks very different.
Pedro Garcia de León, Corinne Heckmann, and Gara Rojas González  from the OECD have compiled and visualised the prognosis on the developments in participation rates in OECD and G20 countries. Their prognosis indicates that almost one third of people with higher education in the OECD and G20 countries are going to be from China in 2020.
The growth in graduation rates has been particularly notable in the non-OECD G20 countries, such as Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia and South Africa that have shown almost 65% increase in enrolments between 2000 to 2010. On the other hand, OECD countries only showed a growth of about 30%.
In essence, if this trend continues the OECD prediction argues that: “China and India will account for 40% of all young people with a tertiary education in G20 and OECD countries“. Logially, the question also raised by OECD is whether there is enough capacity in labour market for absorbition of graduates, and their analysis indicates to show that this might be the case, provided that science and technology in particular have not yet reached a saturation point.
However, one should also note that science and technology graduates might not be representative for the whole population of higher education graduates. Already now, we have heard various reports of issues of graduate unemployment in China, and a UWN article from 2009 indicates an approximately 70% employment  rate for graduates. One can question whether further expansion at the same  rate is likely in all areas of study.
In essence, the question is to what extent countries like China and India will also be able to shift their economies. On the one hand there is the pressures from knowledge econmy, on the other hand is the fact that in the Western world the economies are increasingly being based on trade and services – leading to organisations such as the CEDEFOP using the term “knowledge-based service economy”.
While Chinese service economy has been growing, reports indicate that it is still underdeveloped considering the overall size of Chinese economy, when compared to Western countries. While the science and technology graduates will not have problems finding jobs in China (or abroad for that matter) – would the further development of the service economy become the key factor in maintaining growth and absorbing a great number of the other graduates? Or – will China be able to develop a different path?