è quello che mi sono chiesto leggendo China’s Army of Graduates Struggles for Good Jobs (Andrew Jacobs, New York Times, 11.12.2010). Diverse frasi potrebbero valere anche per i laureati italiani:

• The economy, despite its robust growth, does not generate enough good professional jobs to absorb the influx of highly educated young adults. And many of them bear the inflated expectations of their parents,[…]
• “College essentially provided them with nothing,”
• Between 2003 and 2009, the average starting salary for migrant laborers grew by nearly 80 percent; during the same period, starting pay for college graduates stayed the same, although their wages actually decreased if inflation is taken into account.
• Their undergraduate degrees, many from the growing crop of third-tier provincial schools, earn them little respect in the big city. And as the children of peasants or factory workers, they lack the essential social lubricant known as guanxi, or personal connections

in realtà di differenze tra Cina e Italia ce ne sono tante e grandi: magari potresti fare l’esercizio di individuarle.