The Ministry of Education should review its 2020 project to renovate dormitories or subsidize rental units for disadvantaged students, and conduct a review of its policy of making student dorms a self-liquidating investment, the Control Yuan said in a report yesterday.
Citing the National Audit Office’s 2022 central government budget audit report, the Control Yuan said that 64 universities in the 2021 academic year did not have sufficient space to accommodate students and were 31,078 beds short.
Taipei had the most severe deficiency at 9,455 beds, followed by Taichung at 6,947 beds, the Control Yuan said.
Photo courtesy of National Chi Nan University
The ministry’s 2020 project was launched to address the shortage, and as of September this year, it had helped universities build or repurpose buildings to provide 42,401 beds, only achieving 64.2 percent of its intended goal, the Control Yuan report said.
Seven universities were 500 beds short, had no plans to participate in the project and were not given consultations, leading to some universities having new dorms and others having older buildings, the report said.
The ministry’s project failed to consider the availability of bed space, the equality of dorm rooms and the order of application — factors that affect students’ willingness to apply for school dorms, the Control Yuan said.
Furthermore, universities failed to consider the number of students living off-campus, leading them to underestimate the total number of students wishing to stay in dorms, it said.
The ministry failed to work with universities to inventory the total number of dorms and gauge student needs before prioritizing “ameliorative efforts” to provide more dormitories, it said.
The universities also failed to establish a standard for living space, resulting in spacious communal areas, but small bedrooms in new dorms, the report said.
The report added that universities could consider social housing projects as alternate dormitory spaces, as 62 of the 91 social housing projects seeking construction bids are near universities.
However, the Ministry of Education has yet to consider working with the Ministry of the Interior on this issue, and it should make efforts to rectify this oversight, it said.
Rectifications of the aforementioned oversights should serve as a reference when the education ministry extends the project for another five years, it said.
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