The weather these past few days has been beautiful, a welcome break from the below-zero temperatures we’ve had for most of December and January. It must be especially nice for students, who live in unheated and poorly insulated dorms, and often aren’t even allowed to buy their own space heaters because they might overload the electrical system in the often very old dorm buildings.
Sometimes I ask people why the universities don’t build newer, heated dorms for them to live in, and usually people tell me that that wold be too expensive and would mean that students would have to pay more for room and board, which wouldn’t be feasible for the many students who come from the countryside and already struggle to be able to afford university fees. Then they laugh at my next suggestion, that the university could at least build a few new dorms and let students choose if they’d like to pay a bit more to have heating, since that would be unfair to the students who can’t afford the better dorms. Students want cheap housing, they tell me, and that’s what the universities provide.
But when it comes down to it, the obvious answer to me seems to be that the universities should subsidize student housing — not to put students up in luxury flats, but to make sure that the rooms they share with 3 or 5 other students at least have heating and hot water. It seems like a small investment could go a long way in terms of comfort, and as they are right now a lot of the dorm buildings seem downright dangerous. I wonder of part of the reason for why this hasn’t happened is that the power that be actually think it’s good for students to live in relatively basic conditions for a few years, as a form of character building. Maybe they actually could put more money into student housing, but choose not to so that kids who have been pampered by their parents get toughened up a bit, a modern version of being sent out “up to the mountains and down to the countryside”.
As for me, I’m off to enjoy even sunnier weather in Hainan for a week. I’ll be back to the blog when I return. Until then, stay warm!