How the Narrative of "Secondary New Graduates" Discourage the Japanese from Enrolling in Grad Schools
With a dominance of recruitment agencies when it comes to people switching jobs mid-career, Japan"s labor market is already quite unique in the supposedly egalitarian, information-transparent Internet era. But, paradoxically, the dominance of professional recruiters also create a semblance of uniformity in the job market, by standardizing the image of what is considered a desirable employee. Without explicit intention to do so, decades of norms within the recruiter industry has led to more or less standardized codes on who is considered more desirable as employees in the minds of recruiters, often irrespective of employers' actual needs.
One of such odd standardization emerges in the treatment of people who have gone back and forth between school and work. Like anywhere else in the world, "new graduates" straight out of undergraduate programs with no job experience are treated as "potential hires" that command comparatively low salaries and start at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy. Yet, in the Japanese labor market, a term called "secondary new graduates" also exist, grouping together those who have gone on to graduate school after successfully completing their undergraduate education.
While the term itself is easy enough to understand, with "secondary" referring to the second chance of being a new graduate after deferring the status after finishing undergraduate programs, the members of the group can be much more diverse. While very few people take leave between high school and undergraduate programs, a much more significant number of people may do so between undergraduate programs and graduate schools. In many cases, in line with reality, graduate students are treated as mature experienced professionals who have worked in the past and are simply returning to school to solidify their understanding of work.
Yet, the term "secondary new graduates" is often interpreted to deny the already-experienced status of graduates from graduate schools. By using the same term "new graduate," recruiters often lump together graduates of undergraduate and graduate programs together in their classification of workers, with both occupying the low-waged, least-experienced portion of the corporate hierarchy. The work many graduate students experienced after finishing undergraduate years is often treated in the same vein as internships that are undertaken by undergrads, as good but superficial introductions to the professional working world.
Of course, the use of "often" here does matter because plenty of exceptions exist to the generalization. People who have worked for a decade or more, raising to managerial positions before heading to MBA programs are certainly not treated the same way as 25- and 26-year-olds doing master's course in liberal arts programs after doing a couple of years in a startup. Yet, the line between the truly experienced graduate student and an inexperienced one is often not clear cut but extremely blurry, leaving individual recruiters to make sometimes arbitrary decisions on how to position candidates in their recommendations to potential employers.
Unfortunately, the result can be disappointing to the candidates. Many have undertaken graduate programs as a means of individual exploration, not simply for career advancement in acquiring hard skills but to mature as a member of society with the necessary soft skills, whether it be communication and thinking, that are just as useful in the work environment. Yet, the often isolated nature of academia means that the skills it imparts in students are not immediately useful in the practical, fast-seed world of private sector work. Disappointed grad school students may find returns from grad school pitiful only after graduation.
The common use of the term "secondary new graduate" in Japan only helps to drive home the grad students" disappointment. With the recruiters so firmly in control of finding jobs for people who have some job experiences, individual grad students find it difficult to counter the narrative that their extra schooling counts little in terms of obtaining higher salaries and responsibilities during job search after graduation. Their decisions to go back to school after working for a few years is interpreted as a distraction from building up more useful job experiences, rather than efforts to see previous work in a different light.
Such a reality no doubt discourage people from undertaking graduate education in the first place. The reality that many Japanese graduate schools are having a difficult time recruiting more students lies not simply in the decline of the country"s youth population or lack of will or financial resources on the part of potential applicants. Instead, graduates from undergraduate programs, once employed, find themselves unable to extricate themselves from the professional world even for a year or two to study more, simply because of their justified fear that such an action would do more to derail their future careers rather than bring any benefits.
Thus, as Japanese graduate schools continue to struggle to attract applicants and fight for their survival, they should pay more attention to helping to change the narrative on what it means to be a graduate from a grad school in the professional world. The effort need to involve much more than just connecting students with potential employers but changing the narrative that their students are just "potential hires" willing to do anything for low pay in the beginning just to get their careers started. Until schools convince employers that those who have mixed their careers with both work and schooling, people in Japan will continue to be discouraged from returning to school after working full-time.
One of such odd standardization emerges in the treatment of people who have gone back and forth between school and work. Like anywhere else in the world, "new graduates" straight out of undergraduate programs with no job experience are treated as "potential hires" that command comparatively low salaries and start at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy. Yet, in the Japanese labor market, a term called "secondary new graduates" also exist, grouping together those who have gone on to graduate school after successfully completing their undergraduate education.
While the term itself is easy enough to understand, with "secondary" referring to the second chance of being a new graduate after deferring the status after finishing undergraduate programs, the members of the group can be much more diverse. While very few people take leave between high school and undergraduate programs, a much more significant number of people may do so between undergraduate programs and graduate schools. In many cases, in line with reality, graduate students are treated as mature experienced professionals who have worked in the past and are simply returning to school to solidify their understanding of work.
Yet, the term "secondary new graduates" is often interpreted to deny the already-experienced status of graduates from graduate schools. By using the same term "new graduate," recruiters often lump together graduates of undergraduate and graduate programs together in their classification of workers, with both occupying the low-waged, least-experienced portion of the corporate hierarchy. The work many graduate students experienced after finishing undergraduate years is often treated in the same vein as internships that are undertaken by undergrads, as good but superficial introductions to the professional working world.
Of course, the use of "often" here does matter because plenty of exceptions exist to the generalization. People who have worked for a decade or more, raising to managerial positions before heading to MBA programs are certainly not treated the same way as 25- and 26-year-olds doing master's course in liberal arts programs after doing a couple of years in a startup. Yet, the line between the truly experienced graduate student and an inexperienced one is often not clear cut but extremely blurry, leaving individual recruiters to make sometimes arbitrary decisions on how to position candidates in their recommendations to potential employers.
Unfortunately, the result can be disappointing to the candidates. Many have undertaken graduate programs as a means of individual exploration, not simply for career advancement in acquiring hard skills but to mature as a member of society with the necessary soft skills, whether it be communication and thinking, that are just as useful in the work environment. Yet, the often isolated nature of academia means that the skills it imparts in students are not immediately useful in the practical, fast-seed world of private sector work. Disappointed grad school students may find returns from grad school pitiful only after graduation.
The common use of the term "secondary new graduate" in Japan only helps to drive home the grad students" disappointment. With the recruiters so firmly in control of finding jobs for people who have some job experiences, individual grad students find it difficult to counter the narrative that their extra schooling counts little in terms of obtaining higher salaries and responsibilities during job search after graduation. Their decisions to go back to school after working for a few years is interpreted as a distraction from building up more useful job experiences, rather than efforts to see previous work in a different light.
Such a reality no doubt discourage people from undertaking graduate education in the first place. The reality that many Japanese graduate schools are having a difficult time recruiting more students lies not simply in the decline of the country"s youth population or lack of will or financial resources on the part of potential applicants. Instead, graduates from undergraduate programs, once employed, find themselves unable to extricate themselves from the professional world even for a year or two to study more, simply because of their justified fear that such an action would do more to derail their future careers rather than bring any benefits.
Thus, as Japanese graduate schools continue to struggle to attract applicants and fight for their survival, they should pay more attention to helping to change the narrative on what it means to be a graduate from a grad school in the professional world. The effort need to involve much more than just connecting students with potential employers but changing the narrative that their students are just "potential hires" willing to do anything for low pay in the beginning just to get their careers started. Until schools convince employers that those who have mixed their careers with both work and schooling, people in Japan will continue to be discouraged from returning to school after working full-time.
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