China will roll out special policies to help university graduates in Hubei province in employment and graduation amid the novel coronavirus outbreak, Vice-Minister of Education Weng Tiehui said on Feb 28.

University graduates from Hubei and universities in Hubei will enjoy favorable treatment in enrollment into postgraduate studies as well as government-funded recruitment programs at grassroots levels and in rural areas, Weng said at a news conference at the State Council Information Office.

The ministry is working with local education authorities to introduce more targeted measures, she said.

Universities should postpone thesis defenses for such students as they are forced to stay at home and cannot return to school to finish their thesis, she said.

"Education authorities will also arrange special online job fairs for these graduating students in the epicenter of the outbreak and persuade employers to prolong the recruitment period," Weng said.

The ministry encourages more university graduates to work in grassroots levels and rural areas, small and medium-sized enterprises and apply to enlist in the Chinese armed forces, she said, noting that university graduates will face more challenges in employment as the number of graduates is expected to hit a record 8.74 million this year.

You Jun, vice-minister of Human Resources and Social Security, said the country will take more targeted measures to ensure stable job creation, including encouraging online hiring, providing financial support for small firms and increasing employment training services, to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on employment.

Such measures also aim to boost job-seeking of key employment groups including college graduates and rural migrant workers, he said at the news conference.

The Ministry of Education launched a 24-hour online campus recruitment service on Feb 28 to help graduates find jobs amid the epidemic, Weng said.

The free service is available on the ministry's campus recruitment portal and five leading job-hunting websites in China, which had all put in place special pages for the project, she said.

The ministry has organized 12 online job fairs since the outbreak of the epidemic and another 18 job fairs are in the pipeline, she said.

The country will increase the enrollment of students for postgraduate studies by 189,000 this year and the bachelor's degree programs will strive to admit an additional 322,000 vocational college students compared with the figures last year, she said.

The expansion has taken into account the needs of economic and social development, financial support capabilities and conditions of higher education institutions in China, she noted.

China has about 440,000 supervisors for postgraduate students and 12,000 master's degree awarding centers, with more than 2,000 of the centers established in recent years, according to Weng.

You said "point-to-point" direct trains have been arranged for rural migrant workers to help them return to cities and alleviate labor shortages in some eastern areas.

Migrant workers who returned to their hometowns for the Spring Festival and have not returned to the cities due to the epidemic are also encouraged to work at local infrastructure projects and farming, he said.