Know About Business (KAB)

During the last two years ILO’s Entrepreneurship Education Programme had known a fulgurate expansion. KAB programmes had been implemented in more than 25 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America promoted and coordinated by the Global KAB Programme Coordination in SEED. The programme provides Entrepreneurship Education at vocational, secondary and higher education. One year ago a KAB programme started for university students in China.

The issue of youth employment in the Chinese labour market, the over-supply of university graduates in particular, has become a serious concern of the policymakers. The universities in China have rapidly increased the number of students in the last decade. Now they have four times as many students as they used to have in 1998. The Chinese economy cannot absorb the increasing number of new white-collar workers, despite its high growth. As a result, 73% of the new graduates gained jobs in 2005, while estimated 930 thousand graduates left without employment in the year.

In the mid-2005, the ILO and the All-China Youth Federation (ACYF) agreed to introduce the KAB in China through a small project. The ACYF is known as the country focal point of the YEN in China. The ultimate goal of the project is to get students from non-economic faculties acquainted to business practices. This will open their mind towards setting up their own business and increase their chance to do this successfully.

With the technical support from the Global KAB Programme Coordination, the project organized a team of local experts to adapt the generic KAB materials to the use of university students. The first Training of KAB Facilitators was conducted in January 2006 by Klaus Haftendorn who trained 16 lecturers from six universities, which would organize KAB pilot courses (Heilongjiang University, China Youth University of Political Sciences, Beijing Youth University of Political Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing Aeronautic and Astronautic University, Tianjing Industrial University). 3 Chinese facilitators participated in the International KAB Workshop in Cebu, Philippline,on 4-15 Septebmer 2006. Revision of the Chinese version of the KAB training materials was completed in October 2006. The second training of facilitators was conducted in December 2006.

Since the pilot courses started in February 2006, about six hundred and forty students have enjoyed in KAB, actively participating in small group discussions, business games, case analysis and presentations, etc. The project had the first evaluation meeting in August 2006, which will be followed by the revision of the training materials. In 2007, the project expects to expand the KAB to 200 universities around the country. In a long run, the KAB in China may also be extended to secondary vocational schools as well, taking the advantage of having some universities as centres for developing entrepreneurship education in the regions.

Objectives

Workplan

Counterpart agency

Further information

• Annual Review Meeting of YEN Office China

Opening remarks (pdf 79 KB) by Mr. Zhang Guoqing, Deputy Director of ILO Office for China and Mongolia, 9 August 2006, Beijing