Graduates From China’s Top Colleges Are Working as Housekeepers for the Rich

The stellar resume of a housekeeper who graduated from China’s most prestigious university has stirred debate over the worth of education in the world’s second-largest economy.

The 29-year-old woman holds a bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University, China’s equivalent of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where some of the country’s brightest scientists, engineers, and executives were educated. Her bio has gone viral on Chinese social media after it was posted online by a housekeeping agency last week.

The resume says the woman has been working as a housekeeper or babysitter since 2016, with her previous employers living at some of Shanghai’s most exclusive residential compounds. She is good at English and early education, according to the post, and she is looking for a similar job with a salary of 35,000 Chinese yuan ($5,500) a month.

Chinese students go through years of intense studies to prepare for a grueling college entrance exam, and only the very top performers will be admitted into the country’s top two schools, Tsinghua University and Peking University.

Most fresh graduates from Tsinghua take up jobs in technology, finance, and education, the school said in a 2020 report. And the idea that some graduates opted to become full-time housekeepers or babysitters, jobs commonly looked down upon, has prompted heated discussions on whether or not it is “a waste of talent.”

Some commentators say it’s natural for people to pursue less prestigious jobs with higher pay in an increasingly competitive employment market.

According to a 2020 survey by recruitment site Zhaopin, fresh graduates from Tsinghua University had an average monthly salary of $2,780, the highest among all Chinese college graduates. Most highly-paid corporate jobs require postgraduate degrees.

“Those who call it a waste, are you willing to pay her instead?” says one of the top-voted comments on microblogging site Weibo.

Others say the emergence of elite housekeepers shows the growing inequality in society. While the poor are struggling to climb up the social ladder through hard work, the wealthy class get to have elite graduates manage their villas and speak English with their toddler children.

“What’s the difference between working at capitalists’ companies and working at capitalists’ homes?” a Weibo user commented.

“Let’s work hard, go to Tsinghua or Peking University, then we can take care of the children of capitalists,” another person said.

While the early decades of China’s economic boom gave rise to a new group of super-rich entrepreneurs, many Chinese workers are now experiencing declining social mobility. The young generation have complained about being caught in incessant competition in school and at work, while seeing little hope of joining the elite class.

Your Trust Home Service, the agency that initially shared the woman’s profile on Xiaohongshu, a social site popular with luxury shoppers, told Chinese newspaper Southern Metropolis that it employs highly-educated candidates to work as private tutors or housekeepers for rich customers.

The elite housekeepers are mainly responsible for managing other domestic workers and organizing parties, instead of doing house work themselves, the company told the newspaper last week.

The company cannot be reached for comments on Monday. It said in an online post on Friday that its hotline had been suspended because too many media outlets were asking about the housekeeper from Tsinghua.

On the same platform, housekeeping agencies have shared a slew of glamorous resumes of housekeepers. While Tsinghua graduates are rare, many candidates claim they come from other well-known colleges, some overseas, and speak fluent English.

One woman, for example, says she is a certified nutritionist and children’s massage therapist. Her skills include cooking abalones and shark fins, organizing parties, and driving luxury cars such as Rolls-Royce, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW.

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