There are too many people going ashore for graduate school entrance examinations, and there are not enough dormitories

Author | Liu Chezai

Edited by Yan Fei

Title Picture | "Twenty Don't Confuse"

Housing anxiety, early to college.

In recent years, more and more graduate students have found themselves facing the "era of no dormitory". finally went ashore for graduate school entrance examinations, but the school did not allocate dormitories to graduate students.

According to the graduate admissions guidelines of many schools, part-time students, post-graduate students, and local students who are not allocated dormitories are generally allotted, which means that some students must rent their own apartments.

The first thing I did when I went ashore was to rent a house. (Photo/Picture Worm Creative)

Most of these universities that do not provide dormitories are 985 universities, which are located in first- and second-tier cities across the country. Judging from the market rental price, the additional cost of students has increased sharply.

Why do universities no longer provide dormitories? This obviously has something to do with the fact that colleges and universities continue to expand their enrollment and the number of students is increasing rapidly. In the context of the large-scale enrollment expansion, why can't the school's logistics management keep up, and when the school can no longer provide dormitories, are there more humane measures?

This class of graduate students has an extra rent expense

In the early morning of July 26, 2022, five or six thousand new master's and doctoral students logged in at the same time on the welcome website of Southwest Jiaotong University, in order to "grab the dormitory".

Three months after receiving the admission letter, the group of students found in the freshman admission handbook that not everyone could be assigned to the dormitory, and the dormitory places needed to be "grabbed". On the same day, due to too many people logging in to Yingxin.com at the same time, the website was stuck for a while.

Studying for 3 years in graduate school means a lot of money. (Photo/Picture Worm Creative)

As early as 2018, Peking University attracted social attention because of the dormitory problem. At that time, the school was about to start school, and the school temporarily informed that due to the shortage of dormitory resources, it was necessary to rely on a lottery to decide who could live in Wanliu student apartment, and about 45% of the new students needed to solve the accommodation problem by themselves.

For this reason, several junior college freshmen wrote an article titled "In order to stay at Peking University, I may have to spend 200,000 yuan", which formed a trend of swiping on the Internet. Under the surging public opinion, Peking University changed its approach and helped students in need of accommodation to solve the accommodation problem by adjusting the original accommodation arrangements for teachers and visiting scholars on the Yuanmingyuan campus.

Although the problem of student accommodation was solved at that time, the trend of universities no longer providing dormitories for some graduate students seems to have become an unstoppable wave.

The reporter of New Weekly checked the 2024 master's enrollment regulations announced by major universities and found that 985 and 211 schools, including Nankai University, Tsinghua University, Peking University, Beijing Institute of Technology, Xiamen University, Tongji University, Central Academy of Drama, Nanjing University, Southeast University, etc., do not provide dormitories for part-time master's students or orientation students.

Dense student apartments with not enough beds. (Photo/Picture Worm Creative)

Among them, there are also universities that continue to apply for accommodation. Students who require accommodation apply in advance and the school will arrange it at its discretion.

Around the discussion of "no dormitories for graduate students", there is a call that living in a group dormitory will not only have housekeeping requirements, but also access control requirements, and students will be disciplined by the school like children. In addition, most of the dormitories are six-person and eight-person rooms, leaving almost no privacy space for adults.

But for most price-sensitive students, privacy and freedom of personal boundaries can be set aside in the face of economic issues.

Without public welfare school dormitories, the cost of graduate school has risen sharply. According to the data of previous years, the price of accommodation in China's public universities has not increased for almost 20 years, and the cost is basically between 1,000 yuan per academic year and 2,000 yuan per academic year, with 1,200 yuan per academic year being the majority. If you rent an apartment off-campus, with the land price in first- and second-tier cities, one month's rent is almost enough for the dormitory fee for one academic year.

Traditional university dormitories are cramped and have little privacy. (Photo/Short drama "3 Yuan Women's Dormitory")

Xiaonuo was admitted to Peking University as a graduate student in 2022. After learning that the school would not allocate a dormitory, she rented a two-person room at the south gate of Peking University for 2,300 yuan a month. The advantage is that it is closer to the school, and it is more convenient to go to school and participate in school activities on a daily basis;

She came from a rural family, and she couldn't ask her parents for so much money. The tuition fee for 3 years of graduate school plus accommodation costs nearly 300,000 yuan. Soon after enrolling, she began a variety of intensive part-time jobs.

"I'm woken up by a life without money again," she said on social media, posting her daily full schedule.

In addition to the 600 yuan monthly graduate student subsidy, she also earns income by working part-time Xi in the school office, taking on various activities from time to time, and helping people to do translations, so that she can get about 3,000 yuan per month. But this also means that she has to take on the work in a timely manner, and reasonably arrange the time for part-time work and Xi study.

In the context of enrollment expansion, dormitories will be insufficient sooner or later

The tube building is a popular form of dormitory in the last century. After the 1950s, inspired by the Soviet Union's collective dormitories, Chinese universities built dormitories in the shape of silos. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, inspired by the Soviet Union's collective dormitory building, China's first universities also built dormitories in the shape of a building.

The rooms in the tube building are closely arranged on both sides of the stairway, and there are public toilets on each floor to save space to the greatest extent. After the adjustment of the faculties of Chinese universities in 1952, dormitories were basically built in the form of tube buildings.

Shanghai's famous tube building - Longchang Apartment. (Photo/Picture Worm Creative)

The large dormitory can bring students and teachers together, which is not only convenient for management, but also ensures the basic life of students to the greatest extent. Since 1998, the renovation of school infrastructure has been prevalent, and there have even been calls for "never bringing the tube building of the university into the 21st century", and then such dormitories have gradually disappeared.

The reason for this move is that on the one hand, the school buildings are becoming more and more dilapidated, and on the other hand, it is also related to the large-scale expansion of university enrollment across the country that began in 1999. In November 1998, economist Tang Min submitted a proposal to the central government in his personal name, "On Effective Ways to Start China's Economy - Doubling the Number of Students", suggesting that the central government expand the number of students enrolled. This suggestion was adopted.

The college dormitories in "To Our Dying Youth" may be too spacious. (Photo/"To Our Dying Youth")

In 1999, the number of students enrolled in the country increased by 513,200, and the total number of students enrolled reached 1,596,800, with a growth rate of 47.4 percent, and by 2003, the number of undergraduate and junior college students in China's ordinary colleges and universities exceeded 10 million.

At that time, the continuous expansion of enrollment led to a serious shortage of school infrastructure. The famous Wanliu Apartment of Peking University was built in 2002 in order to alleviate the tension of student accommodation on campus. Wanliu Apartment was built by an external contractor, which was the product of the socialization of logistics explored by colleges and universities at that time. In 2003, Peking University Resources Group spent 535 million yuan to purchase the property rights and use rights of Wanliu Apartment.

Not only are undergraduate students expanding, but graduate students are also expanding. In 1999, there were 73,000 graduate students admitted nationwide, and in 2017, this figure reached 805,000, bringing the total number of graduate students to 2.639 million.

Enrollment expansion is a fundamental megatrend, and this trend is here to stay for some time. On May 13, 2021, the Ministry of Education announced at a press briefing that the enrollment of graduate students will be expanded again. According to the data analysis of the China Statistical Yearbook, the enrollment expansion rate will stabilize at about 10% in 2023 and continue to grow in 5-7 years.

Enrollment expansion is the big background for the future. (Photo/Picture Worm Creative)

It is debatable whether such a scale of graduate students can match the carrying capacity of higher education resources. What's more, in recent years, in order to alleviate the pressure of employment, some colleges and universities have also adjusted the postgraduate study period from 2 years to 3 years, and the doctoral study period from 3 years to 4 years.

In addition, the phenomenon of postponement of doctoral completion is also increasing. According to data from the Ministry of Education, in 2003, the postponement rate of doctoral students was 46.5%, which exceeded 60% in 2012 and reached 64% in 2018.

Due to various factors, the number of students on campus is increasing year by year, resulting in an increasing shortage of dormitories in some universities.

Why don't you build more dormitories?

Since there are not enough dormitories to live in, and the expansion of enrollment is still a general trend in the next 5-7 years, why not build more dormitories?

From 1999 to 2010, in order to meet the Ministry of Education's requirement of "one land per student", many colleges and universities began to expand or relocate new campuses. In that year, the Ministry of Education issued the Notice on the Opinions on the Issue of "Bank-School Cooperation" in Colleges and Universities under the Ministry of Education, encouraging schools to borrow funds from banks to build school buildings. In other words, the construction of campus infrastructure depends to a large extent on the school's own funding.

In 2022, the paper "Current Situation and Problems of Financial Risk Management in Universities" mentioned that a researcher investigated the financial situation of a key university in a Chinese province and found that only about 50% of the university's budget came from financial allocations.

Many colleges and universities have published tenders for dormitory construction projects, showing that all of them are funded by the government. In most cases, there are three types of funds: self-raising by enterprises, partial appropriations, partial self-raising, and public welfare donations.

For example, in 2021, Fuzhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine will build a new dormitory on the Qishan campus, and more than 40 million yuan for the project bidding will all come from self-raising.

(Photo/Screenshot of the official website of the Fuzhou Municipal People's Government)

Or, look to alumni who are competitive and willing to spend money. On November 29, 2023, Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi and an alumnus of Wuhan University, donated a huge sum of 1.3 billion yuan to his alma mater for the construction of campus hardware and software. Thanks to this, Wuhan University has always seemed to have deep pockets, and in 2020 it built four dormitory buildings to ensure the enrollment of new students in September 2021.

The paper also pointed out that in the process of borrowing for construction, many schools have borrowed too much, overdue debts, and have too heavy interest burdens. Due to financial pressure, universities have not dared to build infrastructure in recent years.

It takes a lot of money to build a school. (Photo/Unsplash)

In the West, under the influence of the elite education model, people have formed a consensus that "the dormitory is expensive because the conditions are good". As can be seen in the American non-fiction work "The Tragedy of a Countryman", many students from modest families need to apply for scholarships to afford to go to a good university, let alone live in an expensive school dormitory. Therefore, the accommodation model of Western universities is of little reference significance for China.

In fact, in mainland Taiwan, the shortage of beds in university dormitories is also becoming more and more significant. According to the statistics of the Higher Education Union, there is a shortage of more than 260,000 beds in dormitories at National Taiwan University, and nearly half of the students have no dormitories to live in. The situation is even more dire for universities located in large cities.

In 2019, Taiwan's education authorities proposed a "dormitory improvement plan", which is expected to spend NT$5 billion to promote reform over five years. In addition to the construction of dormitories, there are also measures to strengthen rent subsidies for disadvantaged students on campus and build off-campus social housing.

The so-called "off-campus social housing" means that the school rents and acts as a "second landlord", and gives a certain price subsidy to give priority to students. At present, there are indeed a lot of accommodations around universities in mainland China that are specifically designed for the college student market, but the prices are generally relatively high, the tenants are mixed, and the house types are not specially designed and adjusted for students. If these resources can be integrated, it can not only alleviate the pressure on college dormitory beds, but also ease the financial pressure of students.

But in fact, housing development requires a certain degree of professional ability and supporting resources. Universities are not good at this. From this point of view, it is also a kind of helplessness to type a few big words "no dormitory" on the enrollment brochure.

Compared with the construction of dormitories, subsidizing the rent of disadvantaged students on campus seems to be the softest and easiest to operate.

(Photo/Screenshot of "Administrative Measures for the Issuance of Transportation Subsidies for Professional Degree Master's Degree Students of Fudan University (Trial)")

For example, since 2019, Fudan University has provided a transportation subsidy of 800 yuan per month to day and master's students, and a 500 yuan per month subsidy to master's students from Peking University's School of Education if they do not live in the dormitory.

(Photo/Screenshot of Baoyansheng public account)

After a detailed examination of the students' accommodation needs, the students will be divided according to their family conditions, and the students will be given a certain rental subsidy, or whether the students can apply for dormitories according to the students' economic conditions, courses, and class hours...... It's all about humanized internal adjustment.

Refer to the article

[1] Southwest Jiaotong University graduate students grab dormitories online, and hundreds of people who have not grabbed them need to rent off-campus apartments Big River Newspaper

[2] Liao Tinghui, Peng Yangkai/Improvement of the accommodation problem of university students?

[3] The Impact of New Campus Construction on Debt Formation and Repayment of Universities: An Empirical Analysis Based on 75 Universities Directly under the Ministry of Education Educational Economics Review

[4] Current Situation and Existing Problems of Financial Risk Management in Colleges and Universities: A Case Study of Key Universities in S Province Finance Office of Qufu Normal University

[5] Why are many 985 university dormitories so shabby? Inspur Studios

[6] In order to stay at Peking University, I may have to spend 200,000 | Sociology of Adipose

[7] Behind the Peking University bed turmoil, the reason for not arranging accommodation turned out to be ...... | The Economic Observer

[8] The transformation of logistics services in colleges and universities from welfare to public welfare Heilongjiang Higher Education Research

Based on the analysis of network big data, the construction of on-campus and off-campus dormitories after the expansion of graduate students | China New Communications

Operation: Xihee, Typesetting: Fu Ying, Proofreading: Lai Xiaoni