Charles Zhang Chaoyang, the founder, chairman and CEO of Chinese internet pioneer Sohu.com, urges college students on the mainland to skip postgraduate studies and defer plans to start a new business until they “gain some real experience” by working for a company.
Advertisement
Citing his own experiences, Zhang said his postgraduate degree did not contribute much when he set up and began running his own company, according to his Saturday interview with Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher at Hurun Research Institute, which was posted on ByteDance’s Douyin platform.
Hoogewerf’s Hurun is best known for the Hurun Rich List, an annual ranking of the world’s wealthiest individuals and most successful entrepreneurs.
Zhang, 60, suggested that college graduates can “think about starting some business”, as they gained know-how from working at a company.
After obtaining a PhD in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993, Zhang joined Internet Securities and returned to Beijing to establish the US firm’s operations in China. In 1996, Zhang founded Internet Technologies China, which became the first mainland internet company to raise venture capital funding. A year later, the firm’s name was changed to Sohu.com.
Advertisement
His comments reflect how China is grappling with a graduate jobs crisis, which has been worsened by the current trade war.