China has reported a second consecutive decline in the number of students sitting the country's national university-entrance exams, as a graduate jobs crunch leads many teenagers to decide against pursuing an academic degree.
A total of 12.9 million students have registered for this year's National Higher Education Entrance Examination - known as the gaokao in China - down 450,000 from a year ago, according to data from the Ministry of Education released on Wednesday. In 2025, the number of sign-ups fell by 70,000 compared with the previous year.
For decades, the gaokao has been known for being brutally competitive, with families often viewing the test as having the potential to make or break a young person's future. But attitudes are beginning to change as millions of university graduates struggle to secure jobs amid China's economic slowdown, according to market observers.
China's youth unemployment rate was still hovering above 16% in April, and competition is set to become even more intense this summer when a record 12.7 million fresh graduates enter the job market.
With such an oversupply of talent, employers are often cherry-picking candidates from top universities, meaning graduates of less-prestigious schools are frequently being overlooked, according to recruitment agents.
"An increasing number of vocational secondary school graduates are prioritising employment, rather than higher education," said Chen Zhiwen, a member of the Chinese Society of Educational Development Strategy, a Beijing-based education research organisation.
"With the development of vocational education in recent years and its closer alignment with industry needs, the employment advantages of the students have been on the rise. Some of them are no longer blindly pursuing higher education but are opting for entering the job market directly."
But the gaokao - which kicks off on Sunday - is still widely seen as an opportunity for social mobility, with students from lower-income backgrounds striving to win a spot at one of China's top universities.
"It has become relatively easy for an exam-taker to be admitted by a college now," said Xiong Bingqi, director of the Beijing-based 21st Century Education Research Institute. "But competition for admission to top universities is getting fiercer."
This year, there has been growing concern in China about students potentially using smart glasses to cheat on their exams. Several provincial-level governments - including Shanghai, Guangdong and Fujian - have banned the devices, as well as smartwatches and mobile phones.
Teachers will be required to inspect students' glasses as they enter the exam rooms, with the Ministry of Education warning on Tuesday that bringing smart glasses into a gaokao venue would automatically count as cheating.
Smart glasses have become increasingly affordable in China. Thanks to central government subsidies, most devices now cost less than 3,000 yuan (14,000 baht) online.
Earlier this year, two professors from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology attracted attention when they sat a university computing exam wearing a pair of smart glasses powered by a large language model. They scored an impressive 92.5 out of 100 in just 30 minutes.
