In recent years, with the expansion of colleges and universities, the shortage of accommodation resources for master's students has become more and more prominent, and providing dormitories for students is no longer the established rule of colleges and universities
A college student queues up downstairs in the dormitory to check in. Photo: Xinhua News Agency.
A number of colleges and universities are clear
Accommodation is not available for some graduate students
After combing through the reporter, it was foundIn recent years, many colleges and universities have made it clear in their enrollment guidelines for master's students that they do not provide accommodation for some graduate students. For example, Xiamen University has made it clear in the 2024 master's enrollment brochure that the university will not arrange accommodation for part-time master's students and full-time master's students who are admitted for full-time targeted employment (except for master's students of the Counterpart Support Program for Universities in the Western Region and the Program for High-level Backbone Talents of Ethnic Minorities).
Among them,Some universities do not explicitly provide accommodation for full-time professional degree master's students. For example, Peking University's 2024 Master's Degree Enrollment Guide (Headquarters) clearly states that professional degree graduate schools do not arrange accommodation. Nanjing University clarifies that in principle, the university does not provide on-campus accommodation for 2024 professional degree master's students, and students need to arrange their own accommodation, and the university will provide appropriate transportation subsidies to full-time professional degree master's students. Some colleges and universities also implement a voluntary application system for full-time master's students. Hunan University's 2024 master's degree enrollment brochure clearly states that full-time master's degree students will be subject to a voluntary application system, and the university will provide ** for new students to choose within a certain range according to the existing dormitory resources. In fact, the university no longer provides accommodation services for some master's students, which attracted social attention as early as 2019. At that time, Fudan University and other universities made it clear that they would not provide on-campus accommodation for post-secondary and master's students, and would work with relevant faculties to expand off-campus accommodation resources and assist full-time students to solve their accommodation needs in a socialized way.
Experts: Improve the management level and arrange student dormitories properlySome university dormitories are strained
refracted outIt is after the continuous expansion of the scale of graduate studentsThere is a hidden concern about the shortage of educational resources
A university teacher in Hangzhou once introduced to ** that in the past two years, because of the expansion of graduate students, the school's graduate student accommodation is indeed very tight, so the school has arranged many graduate students to live in various places. For example, it is arranged to be an undergraduate dormitory, or the school rents an apartment next to the campus and converts it into a student dormitory for them to live in.
According to the "2022 National Graduate Enrollment Survey Report" released by China Education**,In 2011, the total number of graduate students enrolled was 560,000, and in 2021 it reached about 1.18 million, more than doubling in 11 years. In 2020, in order to cope with the impact of the epidemic and alleviate the pressure on employment, that yearGraduate enrollment grew by 207%。
Since then, the pace of enrollment has slowed, but the number of graduate students has continued to grow. At the beginning of 2023, New Oriental released the "2023 Master's Enrollment Data Interpretation Report", which shows thatIn 2023, a total of 864 enrollment units across the country will recruit a total of 761763 students (excluding push-exempt and doctoral students, the same below), an increase of 10,245 compared with the total number of non-push-exempt students in 2022. Among them, 2,532 new enrollment places for academic master's degree were added, an increase of 09%；There were 7,713 new professional master's degrees, and the number of enrollment places increased by 16%。
And it is in stark contrast to the expansion of graduate student enrollmentIt is the expansion of school buildings that is growing slowly
As previously reported, since 1999, colleges and universities across the country have begun to expand their campuses to provide new classrooms and dormitories for students. After 2010, with the saturation of the number of colleges and universities, the infrastructure of colleges and universities was gradually improved, and the construction of school buildings slowed down. By consulting the "National Higher Education School Buildings" in the "China Education Statistical Yearbook", it is found that the new school building area in 2009 was as high as 9.62 million square meters, but with the first batch of construction of colleges and universities has passed, the construction of school buildings has gradually slowed down, and it is expected that 2021 will slow down by 40% compared with 10 years ago.
In this regard, Wang Yingmi, an associate researcher at the Institute of Higher Education of South China University of Technology, once analyzed that from 2000 to 2019, the average increase in the construction area of university buildings was only 335%, which is lower than the average annual growth rate of 1260%。
Where will the contradiction of the shortage of university dormitory resources end up and how to solve it?Experts have mixed views on this.
Feng Shuaizhang, dean of the School of Economics and Dean of the Institute of Economic and Social Research of Jinan University, once pointed outShort-term problems such as insufficient school buildings and tight facilities caused by the expansion of enrollment are only specific difficulties in the process of expanding enrollment in colleges and universities, which need to be solved by increasing investment and improving management level. Properly arrange student dormitories, and colleges and universities cannot shirk their responsibilities.
On the other hand, there is also a certain call in the industry to change the way of managing the accommodation of colleges and universities and to partially divest the accommodation provision functions of universities. Xiong Bingqi, vice president of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, believesAt present, the student accommodation in Chinese colleges and universities is still provided by the school, and the boarding system is generally implemented, and this boarding system management method is obviously not suitable for the reform and development of colleges and universities"Sooner or later, the responsibilities that should not be borne by the university should be divested".
Xiong Qingnian, director of the Institute of Higher Education Research of Fudan University, said that in the process of popularization and popularization of higher education, it is not realistic to rely entirely on public financial support, and there are management risks in marketization. "We need to think about how to find a stable solution between the public and market-oriented resources provided by university dormitories. This is actually a very complex systemic problem. ”Xiong Qingnian said.