A coalition of student groups yesterday protested in front of the Ministry of Education calling for legislation requiring universities to build dorms that can accommodate at least half of their students.
“All students ask is that schools provide a sufficient amount of affordable housing, so that they are not overburdened with financial pressure or safety concerns that arise from living off-campus,” said Tamkang University student Hsieh Yi-hung (謝毅弘), a member of the Alliance Against the Commercialization of Education.
Universities recruit far more students than their dorms can accommodate to drive up profit, he said, adding that it reflects a trend of commercializing education.
“Universities say they cannot afford to build more dorms, but is that true?” Hsieh said. “Many universities spend millions to billions of dollars every year building biotech labs and upgrading their medical schools, while there is a lack of projectors, dorms and teachers. They have the money, but they would rather spend it on more profitable investments, which do not necessarily benefit students.”
According to statistics for the 2017-2018 academic year compiled by the ministry, universities’ dorms can accommodate 55.5 percent of their students on average, leaving the remaining 44.5 percent, or 267,000 students nationwide, without on-campus accommodation, said Lee Rong Yu (李容渝), a member of the Taiwan Higher Education Union’s youth action committee.
Forty-nine universities were found to have dorms that could not even accommodate half of their students, she added.
Soochow University (SCU) has one of the lowest dorm capacities, with dorms for only 26.9 percent of its students, SCU student Liu Shu-hsuan (劉書旋) said.
“Most students have little chance of living in a dorm after their freshman year. Students at private universities in Taipei such as SCU not only have to pay higher tuition, but also more rent. More than half of the students in Shilin District (士林) pay more than NT$6,000 per month for rent and some have student loans on top of that,” Liu said. “Getting a part-time job is definitely necessary.”
Student groups urged the ministry to require universities to have the capacity to accommodate at least half of their students and work with local governments to provide off-campus accommodation.
They also demanded that it publish statistics on the number of students at each public university who left their hometowns to study, as well as the percentage of students living in potentially dangerous buildings.
The ministry would discuss the students’ proposals, said Wu Chih-wei (吳志偉), an official at the ministry’s Department of Higher Education.
The ministry has been working on the matter, but the construction of dorms requires planning and inter-ministerial collaboration, he said.
The ministry would encourage universities to build more dorms by offering subsidies and working with local governments to find land or buildings that could be turned into dorms, he added.
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