据官方公布的数据，2022年我国已实现自2016年来考研报名人数的7连涨，今年更是以457万的报考人数，较去年的377万人增长80万人，同比增长21.22%，创下报名人数和增长率的历史新高。虽然今年研究生整体扩招至110.7万人，但扩招增长远不及报考增长的涨幅，招录比超过4:1。
为了更高的学历，更好的竞争力，他很自然地加入了考研大军，或许很多学生怀着和他一样的想法加入了这场考研大战。
2月21日开始，全国各地的2022考研初试成绩已经陆续公布。
一时间，微博成了大型祈祷+emo现场。
当然，高分选手也不能安心，因为已经有过来人在告诫了：
别高兴得太早！分高也不一定能考上！
激增的人数，让本就僧多粥少的考研战场，更加内卷了。本文选自《Sixth Tone》，大家慢慢“食用”~可以尝试自己做精读，当然也可以直接泛读了解一下相关资讯就可以。
Think the ‘Gaokao’ Is Hard? Try This Year’s Grad School Exam
The cutthroat nature of the gaokao, China’s college entrance examination, is well documented. Every year, roughly 10 million Chinese students sit for a single two-day exam that essentially determines their future.中国高考的残酷性已是众所周知的。每年，大约有1000万中国学生参加一个为期两天的考试，这个考试在基本上决定了他们的未来。If they test well they can get into the college of their dreams; if they test poorly, their options narrow dramatically — unless they opt to try their luck again the next year.如果他们考得好，他们可以进入自己的梦想大学；如果考得很差，他们的选择就会急剧缩小——除非他们选择复读明年再碰碰运气。But what if I told you there was another test, even harder than the gaokao?In 2022, 4.57 million people signed up to kaoyan, or take the postgraduate admissions exam. That’s a 21% increase from 2021 and a record high.2022年，457万人报名考研，或参加研究生招生考试。这比2021年增加了21%，创下历史新高。The number of places in postgraduate programs has failed to keep pace, however, which means that the admissions rate this year could be as low as 24%.然而，研究生招生的名额数量未能跟上，这意味着今年的录取率可能低至24%。This is not a one-off event. Over the past decade, competition on the postgraduate exam has become so intense that test-takers sometimes joke it’s become “gaokao-ified.”这不是偶发事件。在过去的十年里，研究生考试的竞争变得如此激烈，以至于考生们有时会开玩笑说考研已经“高考化”。It might be more accurate to say the postgraduate exam is the new gaokao. While passing the gaokao and getting into university was once a major achievement, these days it’s almost a given for those who take it.把研究生考试称作新的高考可能更准确。虽然通过高考并进入大学曾经是一项重大成就，现在可以说几乎是司空见惯的事。Since China expanded its higher education system in the late 1990s, the gaokao admission rate has soared from 34% in 1998 to 92% last year.自上世纪90年代末中国扩大高等教育体系以来，高考录取率从1998年的34%飙升至去年的92%。Now that undergraduate degrees are commonplace, students looking to distinguish themselves on the job market have shifted their focus from simply getting into college to getting into a top-tier university like Tsinghua or Peking University.现在本科学位很普遍，希望在就业市场上脱颖而出的学生已经将他们的注意力从进入大学，转移到像清华或北京大学这样的顶级大学。Other students — including many who tested into middling universities on the gaokao — throw themselves into preparations for the postgraduate exam, seeing it as a second chance to prove themselves and get a leg up in the job hunt.其他学生——包括许多通过高考进入中等大学的学生——投入到研究生考试的准备工作中，将它视为证明自己和在求职中占得先机的第二次机会。China isn’t the first country to experience degree inflation. As has occurred elsewhere, the problem has been compounded by the state of the national economy and a tightening job market.中国不是第一个经历"学历通胀"的国家。正如在其他地方发生的那样，这个问题因国家经济状况和紧缩的就业市场而变得更加复杂。This year’s crop of postgraduate test enrollees are mostly fresh graduates who began their undergraduate studies in 2018. That year, China increased undergraduate enrollment by 910,000 over the previous year.今年的研究生考试报名者大多是2018年开始本科学习的应届毕业生。那一年，中国比上一年增加了91万名本科生。The job market was tight before the pandemic, and its only gotten tighter in the years since.疫情危机之前，就业市场就很紧张，自那以后，就业市场变得更加紧张。Considering the growth of higher education enrollment in recent years and broader macroeconomic trends, it’s unlikely that the “gaokao-ification” of the postgraduate admission test will be reversed any time soon.考虑到近年来高等教育入学率的增长和更广泛的宏观经济趋势，研究生入学考试的“高考化”不太可能在短期内逆转。Completing postgraduate studies to give oneself an upper hand on the job market is both more important and more difficult than ever before.完成研究生学业，让自己在就业市场上占上风，这比以往任何时候都更重要，也更困难。Meanwhile, as postgraduate degrees become more and more ubiquitous, China faces a frustrating problem: an over-educated workforce.与此同时，随着研究生学位变得越来越普遍，中国面临着一个令人沮丧的问题:教育程度过高的劳动力。Simply put, over-education is when an individual’s education exceeds the requirements for their job. A global phenomenon, it is particularly common in industrialized economies.简单来说，过度教育就是个人的教育程度超过了其工作的要求。这是一个全球现象，在工业化国家中尤为普遍。According to researchers, by the early 21st century, the over-education rate in the United States was 20%; in the United Kingdom it was 22%.据研究人员统计，到21世纪初，美国的过度教育率为20%；在英国，这一比例为22%。It is the product of degree inflation — in particular, the inflation of higher education degrees — over the course of the past 50 years.这是过去50年学位膨胀的产物，尤其是高等教育学位的膨胀。On an individual level, over-education means that we benefit less from attending school and are less satisfied with the jobs our degrees qualify us for;在个人层面上，过度教育意味着我们从上学中获益更少，对我们的学位赋予我们的工作更不满意；at the social level, over-education represents a tremendous waste of human capital investment.In China, however, education bears immense cultural significance. The default mindset is still the more educated one is, no matter one’s field, the better.然而，在中国，教育具有巨大的文化意义。大家的思维模式普遍认为，越有文化越好，不管是哪个领域。It is for this reason that the expansion of education has been so extensive: people are willing to strive for higher education even if there’s little to no payoff.正是因为这个原因，教育的扩展才如此广泛:人们愿意努力接受高等教育，即使回报很少或没有回报。If this mindset doesn’t change, China’s over-education problem will only get worse.如果这种心态不改变，中国的过度教育问题只会越来越严重。来源：网络
专访国外老年富豪：回头看，你年轻时付出的努力和牺牲都值得吗？