Feng Lijuan, chief consultant at 51job.com, a major recruiting website in China, said starting a business in these fields is comparatively easier and college graduates have a bigger chance of keeping their businesses going.

"The education sector, especially test-oriented training, is expanding quickly in China and therefore college graduates, as a group of highly educated people, can easily find a place in it," Feng said.

As for the retail and wholesale industries, Feng said a series of online trading websites such as taobao.com provide a simple and convenient platform for college graduates to establish their own online stores.

The report shows that only 8 percent of self-employed college graduates started their own businesses because of difficulty in landing jobs, while 48 percent did so because they wanted to become entrepreneurs.

Other reasons include having good entrepreneurial ideas, being invited by friends or peers to start a business together and believing in the income prospects of entrepreneurship.

The report said college students who started their own businesses after graduating in 2010 now earn an average of 8,424 yuan ($1,349) a month, 41 percent higher than the average for all college students who graduated that year.

Despite the good incomes earned by college graduate entrepreneurs, experts voiced concern for such businesses.

Feng believes that real entrepreneurship lies in innovative developments in areas such as the high-tech sector.

"But most Chinese college graduates can't make it with their current knowledge structure and therefore most of the Chinese graduate entrepreneurs end up in the service industry."

Chen said, "An ideal entrepreneurship program can solve the problem of college graduates' employment and also create new industries and promote the development of the economy, science and technology, just like Steve Jobs and Apple did."