What causes the adverse selection of highly educated talents?

(1) The education signal is weakened. In Spencer's labor market model, there is information asymmetry. Applicants know their abilities but recruiters don't. If there is no other identifiable information and the recruiter is only willing to pay the average wage level, then people with high ability may be "expelled" from the job market by people with low ability. The easier it is to obtain academic qualifications, the lower the educational cost of low-ability candidates, and the possibility of equal education for low-ability candidates and high-ability candidates exists. At present, the number of doctoral and master's programs in China University is increasing, and there are many universities with poor school-running ability. The result of blind enrollment expansion is the rapid expansion of highly educated groups, but the quality cannot be guaranteed, so there is a problem of adverse selection in the job market.

(2) The salary expectation of graduate students is too high. When the job market is chaotic and balanced, those with high academic qualifications will face the danger of unemployment if they can't lower their salary expectations. When undergraduates choose to pursue further studies, an important consideration is to get higher salary and better job position. Students not only have financial investment, but also have time investment in the postgraduate stage, so it is easier for them to get more rewards than undergraduates when they graduate. However, most enterprises are only willing to pay the market wage level and cannot meet the high expectations of graduates.

(3) Theory is divorced from practice. When theory is divorced from reality, education has little effect on promoting labor productivity, while the wage level is directly proportional to labor productivity, so education has little effect on promoting wages. However, education itself requires a cost. After receiving higher education, highly educated talents will expect higher salary levels to recover their costs. When their actual labor productivity is low, enterprises will not give higher wages, which may lead to unemployment.