When the Taiyuan University of Technology in the city of Taiyuan, Shanxi province held a job fair for its new grads, on Nov 27, a chilly winter day, the job situation seemed about as cold as the weather, with school figures showing an employment rate of postgraduate students down 6.18 percent from last.

It stood at only 9.22 percent, while the figure for undergrads was slightly below 14 percent, a drop of 2.84 percent year-on-year. The university has long been tied to the coal industry and the less-than-optimistic employment situation might be blamed on that, with the major coal producers showing no signs of hiring this year.

By now, none of the school’s mine engineering students has found a job with a coal company, according to Yuan Qunfang, head of the school’s enrollment and vocational guidance office, who notes that this is completely different from the past, when coal industry was flourishing and all the students with that major would be snatched up by the big players even before graduation.

Now, to adapt to a changing situation, the school has tried to guide the students into careers in other industries, such as railways, and it has reduced the number of people majoring in the coal-based majors.

Some of the grads were already aware of the job situation so they looked for opportunities elsewhere even though the job might not match with their chosen field.

Meanwhile, the demand is up in other majors such as marketing, machine manufacturing, electrical engineering and water conservation where it has seen stable growth in the past three years.

And, even computer science and technology, which has been in a slump since 2000, after a healthy boom, is showing increasing demand this year, as the electronics industry gets some new life. Jobs for computer science and technology rank fourth in this job fair’s postings, above telecommunications and civil engineering.

Nonetheless, Yuan adds, the grads face a grim job situation this year.

In commenting on how schools might find a way out of this predicament, Wang Yun, deputy head of of the provincial Education Dept, says there is no simple solution, say, by following the market, and that the key point is to improve education quality. Wang then used the example of how some grads have no difficulty in getting a good job even in a down market, thanks to their overall competitive quality.

So, according to one Taiyuan University of Technology official, the current employment situation may force institutions of higher learning to improve their model since a slight adjustment in their majors doesn’t seem to help much.