The survey, covering 6,000 college graduates in 100 schools of higher learning, reveals that in large cities the proportion who say they needed good contacts to get a job was more than 50 percent.

Deputy professor Wang Liping with the Research Institute on Public Policies of the Beijing University said that while using contacts is contrary to a meritocracy, they are inevitably quite important when competition intensifies.

The survey said that about 27.25 percent of the grads have not found a job by the end of May. More then 15 percent of the graduates said they would continue their education or have postponed job hunting.

Nationally just under 50 percent of the grads have received job offers. In Beijing the number of grads with jobs jumps to just over 60 percent.

Graduates who majored in agriculture were "unexpectedly popular"in the job market as more than 78 percent of them have secured jobs, said the survey.

Business management was the second most popular major among employers with an employment rate of 58.02 percent. Graduates from engineering, law, education and medicine were the next most successful job seekers.

With fierce competition and a tight supply of jobs, salary expectations of this year's graduating classes was low. More than 4.13 million students graduated with bachelors degrees this year, an increase of 22 percent, said the survey.

More than 66 percent of the respondents expect their monthly salaries to be between 1,000 and 2,000 yuan (125 to 250 U.S. dollars). While some 67 percent of the respondents said "opportunities for personal development" were more important than salary. Only 1.58 percent said they would work for "no payment during probation".

According to the survey, more than 52 percent of the student respondents viewed "the lack of social experience" as the biggest obstacle in their job hunting. Almost a quarter of the grads said they lacked good job-hunting skills.

Of the 44 employers polled, 77.3 percent said graduates expect too much from their jobs in terms of salaries and personal development opportunities.

Nearly 60 percent of them said the current college curriculum was "irrational", which some employers say has hurt graduates chances of becoming useful employees.