Beijing to Build More College DormsBeijing will build 1 million square metres of college dormitories in the next three years to help ease the housing shortages caused by recruitment expansion, said municipal education committee sources.The newly built dormitories will give students bigger rooms, said committee director Xu Xi'an during a recent interview. Each room will house four undergraduates, as compared with the present six to eight students crammed into a 10 square-metre room. For master's degree students, two students will share a room, as compared to four now. Doctoral students can have their own rooms, as compared with two or three per room in the past, said Xu. There are 270,000 bachelor's and master's students now enrolled in Beijing's colleges and universities. In response to a State policy of upping college recruitment that began last year, the number of students will grow to 480,000 over the next three to five years. "Beijing has set up a working committee to oversee construction of college students' dormitories, to offer more rooms for new students," said Xu. Dorms and dining halls in some colleges and universities have had overcrowding problems this year. Beijing University has more than 80,000 square metres of dorms housing 17,000 students. The per capita living area for bachelor's degree students is 2.4 square metres, according to Beijing Morning Post. The Beijing University campus has no more space to build new dorms, said Lu Bin of the university's Planning and Development Division. To meet the needs of higher enrollment, colleges and universities are encouraged to open campus life services to the business market, according to the Ministry of Education. |
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