VietNamNet Bridge – Thousands of dormitory rooms for university students have been built, but students still cannot find rooms to rent in HCM City.

Demand outstrips supply

Only the luckiest students of the HCM City Banking University can rent the rooms at the school’s dormitory. With the limited land fund, the school cannot expand the dormitory despite the increasing number of students. It can only offer rooms to 520 students at maximum, including 400 female students, while there are thousands of new students.

The HCM City Transport University only has enough rooms for 450 students. The Van Lang University has built a dormitory for 500 students. However, the figures are far from meeting the high demand.

The HCM City Medical and Pharmaceutical University, HCM City University of Technique Education reportedly can meet 10 percent of the accommodation demand.

Thousands of students of the Culture University hope they would get seats at the new dormitory which is now under the construction in district 9. Once it is put into operation, it would provide seats to 2,000 students. However, it is still unclear when the construction finishes, though the school initially planned to complete the work in 2011, because the construction work is still awaiting capital.

The existing dormitory, accommodating 300 students, is now in very bad conditions.

Most of the universities which have high numbers of students, such as the Agriculture and Forestry University, Culture University, Economics University, reportedly can only meet 30 percent of the demand.

As the numbers of seats at dormitories are limited, schools consider providing rooms in accordance with priority order.

The HCM City University of Education, for example, received the registrations for seats at dormitories from September 9 to September 20. However, since the dormitory fits 350 students only, the school prioritized to give rooms to the students, whose fathers are the soldiers, orphan students, or students from poor areas.

The dormitories left idle

The dormitory of the HCM City National University has 2,100 rooms, which can accommodate 16,300 students. It is large enough not only for the students of the school, but also from other schools as well.

Local authorities of many provinces have cooperated with the university to build the dormitory in an effort to create most favorable conditions for the provinces’ students to study at the schools in HCM City.

This allows the university to build a dormitory with good material facilities and infrastructure items.

There are 9 mess halls at the dormitory, 11 canteens, laundry center, ATMs, groceries. The most essential services are also available there. The internal bus routes allow students to travel conveniently to serve their study.

There is also a projection room, theaters for music performance, five football playing field and volleyball field.

The students from the provinces staying at the dormitory only have to pay VND100,000 a month, while the students from other provinces have to pay VND120,000.

However, students still keep hesitant to live at the dormitory. Nguyen Hoang Quan, a second year student of the school, said he prefers living in the rent rooms outside to living at the dormitory, which is located far from urban areas.

Meanwhile, another student said he does not like to follow the strict regulations, especially the ones on timetable, set up by the dormitory’s management board. He would rather to live alone and control his time himself.

Linh Chi