More Chinese Students Are Applying for Grad School Again. The Number That Matters Is Civil Service.
Applications for China's postgraduate entrance exam ticked up to 3.47 million for 2027, the first rise in four years. But the number that best explains the mood is the one that overtook it: for the first time, more people applied for the civil service exam than for grad school.
When the Ministry of Education announced that 3.47 million people had applied for China's postgraduate entrance exam, the number itself was almost an afterthought: up 40,000 from last year, the exam to be held in December 2026. What made the figure trend was the decade of data it ended.
An eleven-year comparison compiled by a test-prep teacher and shared widely on Weibo tells the story: graduate applications climbed from 1.65 million in 2015 to a peak of 4.74 million in 2023 — the years when a master's degree was sold as insurance against a brutal job market. Then came the retreat: 4.38 million, 3.88 million, 3.43 million in 2026. This year's 3.47 million is the first uptick since the peak, and analysts read it as a bump, not a boom.
The most striking figure in the same chart is the one that crossed it. In 2026, applications for the national civil service exam reached 3.718 million — overtaking the graduate exam for the first time. For 2027 the two are nearly level: 3.47 million against 3.45 million.
The reasons are being debated in the posts themselves, and they are not flattering to the degree. "The cost-effectiveness of grad school keeps falling," argued one education commentator, listing the arithmetic: enrollment has expanded so far that a master's no longer guarantees a better job, tuition keeps rising, and the four-year round trip costs a fortune in time. The exam is the surer bet — it is called 上岸, "getting ashore," because a government post is the only job many young people believe cannot be lost. "Land ashore, and it's the real good life" (上岸才是真香), his post concluded.
Others pushed back that the rebound is not panic but trimming: graduate school remains a genuine requirement for research, medicine, law and the civil service itself, and the students who remain are the ones who want the degree. Whether the number is a floor or a plateau, both sides agree on the destination: the safest seat available in China's job market is now the one behind a government desk.