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as we all know, filling out college entrance examination applications is a stage that is more miraculous than the stock market. warren buffett, the stock god, may not be able to buy stocks at the lowest price.but every year there are brave candidates who take advantage of opportunities in colleges and universities.

in 2023, a candidate from guangdong got admitted to guangzhou university's top civil engineering major with 453 points. in 2024, a candidate from hebei also got admitted to tsinghua university's civil engineering major with 665 points, proving in practice what "choice is more important than hard work" truly means.

in recent years, the unexpected and large number of civil engineering students are no longer unexpected, but the norm. when civil engineers are stuck working as slaves on construction sites, the civil engineering score line cannot escape the fate of being stuck.

nowadays, when talking about civil engineering, the next thing that comes to mind is "tiankeng major". the internet is full of "running away with the bucket", and the only thing missing is that it is written on the surface.the career of civil engineering is no longer attractive.

smart construction, another kind of civil engineering

if you search online for "what are the prospects for xx major?"then it is highly likely that all majors are disapproving and discouraging people from studying.employment is either a sunset industry or a sunrise industry where the sun never rises.

in this nationwide wave of persuasion, the once popular civil engineering industry has also risen from the bottom on its own, surpassing the four major tiankengs of biochemical, environmental and materials, and becoming the "king of tiankengs", but it could not escape the "rotation of fortune" after all.

with the decline of civil engineering, some other civil engineering majors, with prefixes such as "intelligent" and "wise" that are full of technology, have begun to rise quietly.

taking the intelligent construction major added in 2017 as an example, since tongji university was the first to be approved for the new major,^[3], each school rushed to apply forin recent years, the number of colleges and universities approved to offer intelligent construction majors has increased year by year.

so far, 153 colleges and universities have been approved to add smart construction majors, while three years ago, the number was only 70.

the enrollment boom followed closely. according to the document released by the ministry of housing and urban-rural development, the number of students enrolled in the national intelligent construction major in 2022 is 3,562, and it will increase to 5,539 in 2023.^[4]more enrollment has also brought a lot of doubts. what exactly is intelligent construction?

it is obviously civil engineering, but the name of the major avoids the word "civil engineering", which makes it seem even more obvious. it always makes people feel that civil engineering has changed its name, and there is even a saying that "civil engineering is renamed intelligent construction."

but in fact, we counted 55 colleges and universities that offer intelligent construction majors and found that colleges and universities often set up intelligent construction majors based on civil engineering.the existing civil engineering major will not be renamed or cancelled.

among them, 96.4% of universities have set up intelligent construction in the colleges where civil engineering is located, and only jilin university of architecture has classified it into the college of modern industry, sharing the same college with the remote sensing science and technology major in surveying and mapping.

not only colleges,the course lists of the two majors are also "one in each other".

we selected six universities that offer both intelligent construction and civil engineering in a stratified manner. after comparing the professional training programs, we found that from 985 universities to general universities, intelligent construction has traditional civil courses such as structural mechanics, soil mechanics, and engineering materials.but it has also incorporated computers, machinery, and economic management, and is really becoming "intelligent."

however, the degree of intelligence is not high, and even graduates of intelligent construction have come out to complain:

learn intelligent construction and enjoy a civil engineering life. you can learn everything but know nothing. the only thing is that when you run away with your life, you have a wider path to change careers.

intelligent construction, which is just a change of name but the essence remains the same, is inevitably considered by netizens as taking advantage of the popularity of computers, labeling it as an "interdisciplinary subject", and using the word "intelligent" to make a false move, thereby allowing tiankeng civil engineering to make a comeback.

civil engineering has thus embarked on the path of "changing its name to change its destiny" in the eyes of everyone.

the once popular major is no longer popular

even though civil engineering is now condemned by everyone, if we go back to more than a decade ago, the ancestors of civil engineering were once wealthy.

from 2006 to 2015, some people call it the "golden decade of construction and civil engineering."^[5]that period of infrastructure construction was in full swing, not only witnessing the rise of skyscrapers, but also giving birth to the flourishing and glorious civil engineering profession. the number of colleges and universities that followed suit and opened civil engineering majors has rapidly climbed from 392 in 2008 to 572 in 2022.^[6]。

the civil engineering industry was at the forefront of the trend and many top talents gathered there, and the financial prospects were bright, but the good times did not last long.

the massive construction under the slogan of “build roads first to get rich” has made the national urbanization rate jump from 36.09% in 2000 to 63.89% in 2020.^[7][8]with the pain of the country's transformation of its development model, the real estate industry is in turmoil.behind the rising urbanization rate is the civil engineering industry which is on a downward trend.

the former popularity of civil engineering was like a mirage, but the expansion of enrollment due to the shortage of supply has actually laid the foundation for theserious supply and demand imbalance, the emergence of “civil engineering exodus” is inevitable.

the "2024 china undergraduate employment report" released by mycos shows that from the 2019 to 2023 classes, the proportion of graduates engaged in construction engineering after graduation has been decreasing.moreover, the decline in this proportion over the past five years is the largest among the 46 occupational categories.

young people’s enthusiasm for the civil engineering industry has been cooling down, and the trend of dissuading them from pursuing it has also spread to college admissions, with the admission scores dropping again and again.

take hebei province, where the college entrance examination is extremely difficult, for example. in recent years, among the "old eight architectural schools" that have a significant influence in the civil engineering industry, except for tsinghua university's civil engineering major, which has quietly risen in the lowest admission ranking,the admission rankings of most other schools have dropped.

compared with previous years, the minimum admission ranking of south china university of technology in hebei in 2024 dropped by nearly 7,000 places, and xi'an university of architecture and technology plummeted by more than 10,000 places.

even the revamped smart construction is not able to hold up. for example, the smart construction of shenyang jianzhu university has dropped from 41,461 in 2022 to 43,893 in 2024 in liaoning province. although it is not as much as the drop of more than 30,000 in civil engineering during the same period, it is also a fellow sufferer.^[9]。

in order to save the sluggish enrollment, colleges and universities have also come up with various tricks, including placing civil engineering in the early admission batch and the batch for poor students.^[10], combined with other subjects for general admission^[11]...the dazzling enrollment methods are not a scam, but they are worse than a scam.

as for the streaming, whether students succeed in "automation" or fail in "civil engineering" depends on their personal luck.

the civil engineering department used to be filled with top scorers who studied hard for decades, but now it is filled with frustrated students who want to change their majors. the transition from "high scorers get in" to "avoid it" is short-lived and glorious:

instead of reaping the dividends of industry development, they encountered sky-high housing prices, real estate risks, and civil engineering difficulties, and reaped the negative benefits of the times.

running away with the bucket is the fate of many civil engineers

in the professional pit,students study the most demanding courses and stay up late at night to do design.i survived graduation with a broken heart, found a job and climbed out of the pit, only to discover that not only is there a bigger pit outside the pit, but there is also a bigger pit outside the pit.

we counted the relevant discussions on social platforms and foundhigh pay, little work, close to home, the civil engineering industry has all the advantages.the suffering is even doubled.

drawing designs while enjoying air conditioning and planning projects with a blueprint in hand are fantasy before getting a job; pouring concrete under the scorching sun and sweating, while raising dust, and living with putty powder and formaldehyde are the norm for civil engineers.

when it comes to rushing a project, the saying "work hard on sunny days and burn the midnight oil" has caused countless civil engineers to work overtime all year round, sometimes 996 and often 007:

the 996 work schedule on the internet is exploitative, but it is truly a blessing for civil engineers.

working like a slave on a construction site, the pay is not worth the hard work. according to the 2024 china undergraduate employment report, the monthly income of civil engineering undergraduates in 2020 increased by 67% three years after graduation, barely surpassing the national undergraduate average of 65%.^[12], the salary increase is not high, not to mention that some companies are cutting salaries and laying off employees.

i thought that i would become more popular as i get older. after all, looking back at the past, the "three generals and five items" are within reach - civil engineering students can become chief engineers in three years on a construction site and project managers in five years.

nowadays, if you want to achieve the "five generals and ten items", you have to work on the project day and night, isolated from the world all year round.civil engineers cannot see their loved ones, cannot be with their children, and the only contact with their families is monthly transfers.a "lifelong responsibility system" makes people sleep uneasy even after retirement.there is always a sword of damocles of "project failure" hanging over our heads.

the civil engineers' ambition to contribute to the construction was slowly buried by the dust of the construction site, the trivialities of reality and endless fatigue.

therefore,civil engineering job satisfaction is often lower than the national average.the satisfaction rate of civil engineering undergraduates in 2018 was 71% five years after graduation, only 3% higher than that of architecture, which ranked last.^[12], it is inevitable to run away with the bucket.

take the state-owned construction company t bureau as an example. from 2017 to 2018, it lost 302 engineering and technical personnel in just one year. more than 81% of them had a bachelor's degree or above, and most of them were from civil engineering majors of key universities.^[13]。

the civil engineers who ran away were mainly young people, and more than 90% of the lost talents were 35 years old and below. in addition, 55.9% of them had been in office for five years or less, and most of them were short-term workers.

as the previous batch runs away, new cheap labor will come in.

batch after batch of civil engineers work in the wind and sun, day and night, building high-speed railways and roads, turning natural barriers into thoroughfares, constructing high-rise buildings, and revitalizing unfinished buildings. however, they find themselves spending most of their lives on the construction site "007×365", unable to raise their children or support their elderly parents. after years of hardship, they get a "three totals and five items" - three years of socializing, and the five indicators are too high.