A few days ago, the preliminary results of the 2024 postgraduate examinations were announced. Those who didn't do well in the exam were naturally depressed, but some of those who scored high in the exam couldn't be happy. In addition to worrying about poor performance in the retest, but also because graduate school is only the beginning of a series of problems.
First and foremost is the issue of money. Now that I'm in graduate school, I really can't afford to study if I don't have a mine at home. Not only have tuition fees risen, but many graduate students at many schools have no dormitories to live in. Many people study for three years in graduate school, and it costs 100,000 yuan just to rent a house.
At the end of 2023, Peking University, Beijing Normal University and other universities have publicly stated that they will no longer provide dormitories for professional master's students.
I was finally admitted to a prestigious school, why did I start renting for the first time in my life?
Many graduate students do not have dormitories to live in
In fact, not all graduate students do not have dormitories to live in, and the most injured are professional degree master's students, which are commonly known as "professional masters".
Ten years ago, some universities began to prevent some professional and master's degrees from providing accommodation.
As early as 2014, Beijing Normal University, which is located in a place where land is at a premium, did not provide dormitories for some professional and master's degrees [1]. After 2020, this scope was expanded to all post-secondary and master's students at the Beijing Campus of Beijing Normal University [2].
Peking University caused a lot of buzz in 2018. According to the 2018 Master's Enrollment Prospectus, only 55% of master's students can be provided with beds due to the limited dormitories, and the other 45% of them need to solve their own accommodation problems [3].
To this end, in the summer of 2018, several Peking University master's students wrote a letter to President Lin Jianhua, titled "In order to stay at Peking University, I may have to spend 200,000 yuan" [4].
By 2024, according to the latest master's enrollment guidelines of various universities, at least 9 universities across the country will not provide dormitories for full-time professional and master's degrees, and at least 25 universities will not provide dormitories for part-time or targeted employment graduate students.
Most of these universities are located in first- and second-tier cities, and most of them are "double first-class" universities. Among them, Beijing has the largest number of universities with many people and few places and high housing prices.
Among them, some schools claim to provide certain transportation subsidies (e.g., Nanjing University), while others claim to assist students in solving accommodation problems [5][6].
For example, Fudan University has stated that it will strive to expand off-campus accommodation resources for post-secondary and master's students [5]. But this kind of assistance is only available to some of the lucky ones. Fudan University has cooperated with external apartments to determine which apartments have lower cost through lottery, and those who are not selected need to solve the accommodation problem on their own [7].
In addition to these schools that are clearly stated in the admissions brochure, there are also some universities that do not say that they do not provide accommodation, but in fact the dormitory resources are very tight, and even have to draw lots and lottery numbers to live in the dormitory.
In 2022, Southwest Jiaotong University will be on the hot search because of "graduate students grabbing dormitories". Before the start of the school year, the new students had to experience a more brutal "dormitory grab" than "class grabbing", and hundreds of students who did not get it were unable to live in the dormitory buildings on campus after entering the school [8].
It was also in that year that many universities in Hunan collectively encountered the problem of "dormitory difficulties". Due to the tight supply and demand of dormitories, Hunan Normal University was once exposed to 2,000 new students who were assigned to Jinhaigu County Middle School, more than ten kilometers away [9]. Xiangtan University wants to change the number of seniors from four-person dormitories to ten-person dormitories [10].
I studied for three years in graduate school and spent 100,000 yuan to pay rent
As a result, graduate students who did not have a dormitory to live in had to embark on the road of renting.
Anyone who has rented a house, especially in a first-tier city, will know how unforgettable this experience is. The first thing they have to deal with is high rents.
For part-time graduate students, they have jobs and accommodation in the city where the university is located, and the lack of accommodation by the university will not cause much trouble. For full-time master's degrees, the situation is completely different.
We calculated the rent level near the central campus of Peking University, and found that if a Peking University student wants to live in a shared room with a commute time of less than half an hour, the monthly rent is at least 2,713 yuan, not including water and electricity, intermediary fees, service fees, etc. After three years of master's study, it is not uncommon to spend 100,000 yuan in rent.
In contrast, the master's degree of Peking University lives in the dormitories of Yanyuan or Wanliu, and the accommodation fee for a whole year is only about 1,000 yuan [11].
And this nearly 3,000 yuan a month does not buy much good accommodation, most of the rooms are located in "old and dilapidated", less than 12 square meters, and a bed and suitcase seem crowded.
In addition, there are many fire regulations outside the school, and the landlord himself may not allow it, so it is difficult for many students to share a room with several classmates like a university dormitory to spread the rent.
If you want to save rent and live better, you have to endure long and extreme commutes.
For example, if a graduate student from Beijing Normal University or Peking University wants to live in a house with a monthly rent of 2,000 yuan and more than 10 square meters, he will most likely have to commute back and forth for more than two hours every day.
For class at 8 a.m., others can get up more than 10 minutes in advance without being late, while they may have to squeeze the subway at 6 a.m. When I meet the evening class, it may be more than ten o'clock in the evening when I get home, and the degree of hard work is no less than that of the employees of the "996" factory.
Graduate students who have not been exposed to the dangers of society are under pressure from research, graduation, and job hunting on the one hand, and have to deal with landlords, agents, and strange roommates on the other.
In order to reduce financial pressure, some masters also share the rent through internships and part-time jobs. You may attend classes and work during the day, and you may have to go home and fight with your roommates at night. When I think about it in the dead of night, I wonder if I really need this degree.
The expansion of Chinese universities cannot keep up with the expansion of enrollment
So, why can't universities provide dormitories for all graduate students? The core reason is simple: the pace of expansion of colleges and universities cannot keep up with the speed of enrollment expansion.
From 2000 to 2022, China's graduate student enrollment soared from about 130,000 a year to 1.24 million as colleges and universities expanded dramatically, an increase of nearly ninefold, according to the Statistical Bulletin on the Development of Education released by the Ministry of Education.
In the past 2020, the proportion of graduate students in the country has increased by more than 20%, and most of them are professional master's degrees [12].
The continuous expansion of enrollment has naturally led to an increase in the number of college students. Since 2000, the average number of students enrolled in regular colleges and universities in the country has risen from 5,289 to 1680,000 people, more than tripled.
In particular, in 2021, the average number of students enrolled in colleges and universities surged by 366%, and the news that many university dormitories are not enough to live in has also appeared since then [13].
Faced with this situation, universities have not thought of a way.
China Education Daily has reported that with the large-scale expansion of colleges and universities, many universities have set off a "geothermal expansion", frequently building new campuses, and even running schools in other places [14].
According to incomplete statistics, in 2017 alone, there were more than 200 new campuses of colleges and universities under construction or existing in the country, which are used to accommodate a steady stream of new students [14].
But expansion of this scale is not enough. According to data from the Ministry of Education, since 2000, although the area of colleges and universities in the country has expanded, the construction area per student has declined.
The same is true when it comes to the size of the student dormitory.
In the decade from 2013 to 2022, the average student dormitory floor area of colleges and universities in China increased from 1253 square meters down to 771 sqm. There are still many students crammed into bunk beds with more than six people, and there is little room for self-study in the dormitories.
For example, Beijing Normal University, which has a shortage of dormitories, has been dissuading candidates from withdrawing for a long time because the dormitories are too broken.
The shortage of resources in university buildings is also reflected in the resources such as study rooms and classrooms. For example, China University of Political Science and Law not only has a crowded dormitory, but also has to grab classroom seats in class, and there may be no seats to sit if you go late.
It is difficult for these schools to continue to expand in large cities where land is scarce and land prices are high.
In the past few years, many schools wanted to run schools in other places and build new campuses, but they were also stopped due to lack of funds and affecting the balanced development of education [15].
In January this year, seven national departments issued a document mentioning that "colleges and universities are encouraged to supplement dormitory resources by purchasing and leasing talent apartments, commercial and residential buildings and other social buildings around the school" [16].
Perhaps in the future, graduate students who do not have dormitories to live in will be able to live in low-rent apartments provided by universities. But what is certain is that the era when all students could spend one or two hundred yuan a month to live in a dormitory is gone.