news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

author | lu lu

just after the school started, the civil engineering major received explosive news.

a report circulating online said, "all freshmen of wuhan university's architecture department ran away en masse. there were originally forty or fifty students, but after they changed their majors, only four were left. the number of professors in the department directly exceeded that of the students."

a single stone stirs up a thousand waves. although after verification, the source of the news is unknown and it is likely to be fake news, netizens are still discussing it enthusiastically.

the main reason is that the civil engineering majors in colleges and universities are really collapsed.

——xi’an jiaotong university, a c9 university, expects 5,719 undergraduate graduates in 2025, of which only 24 will be in architecture and only 3 in civil engineering.

——at sichuan university, a 985 university, the number of students who changed their majors in civil engineering and architecture in 2024 reached hundreds.

——hunan university, which has one of the top ten civil engineering majors in the country, had 98 transfers out of the school of civil engineering in 2022 and no one transferred in.

——the well-known 985 shandong university has planned to directly cancel the civil engineering major.

on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the school of civil engineering of hunan university, academician zhou fulin, who has been deeply engaged in this field for decades, lamented that civil engineering, which was once popular all year round, is now listed as the least popular major and seems to have suddenly become a "sunset" major.

a speck of dust from the times, when it falls on a profession, is like a mountain. civil engineering majors are really not popular anymore. where is its future going?

in major universities, the value of civil engineering majors has plummeted.

in 2024, a candidate from ningxia scored 438 points to get into tongji university, the world's no. 1 in civil engineering. you should know that the first-tier score for science undergraduates in ningxia in 2024 is 432 points, and 438 points is only 6 points higher than the first-tier score! also in 2024, south china university of technology, also one of the "old eight schools of architecture", also dropped nearly 7,000 places in the lowest admission ranking in hebei.

in 2023, national civil engineering projects of famous universities such as beijing university of science and technology, dalian university of technology, and sichuan university have entered the second round of volunteer recruitment in yunnan. as long as you have a science score of 485 or above, you can apply.

a number of well-known 985 universities such as wuhan university, huazhong university of science and technology, and shandong university are unable to recruit enough students for their national civil engineering programs in henan, and have also started recruiting volunteers. many candidates would rather not accept the adjustment than apply.

in the same year, the civil engineering major of guangzhou university encountered a cold snap and became a hot topic. the minimum score for admission to the 204 majors in the general physics category and the planning, architecture and civil engineering group was only 453. in comparison, even the shenzhen polytechnic, which had just been upgraded to a vocational undergraduate program, had a minimum score of 555 for physics, a difference of more than 100 points!

netizens joked that one was promoted from a junior college to a bachelor's degree, and the other was promoted from a bachelor's degree to a junior college.

in the previous year, the admission score for tongji university's flagship major, civil engineering, in henan was only 564 points, more than 100 points lower than the 667 points in 2021. the lowest score ranking dropped from 1,730 last year to 43,252, a drop of more than 40,000 places. that year, the civil engineering major plan of the old 985 jilin university was not fully enrolled, and there were even 8 vacancies.

the data from one year may be accidental, but the news from several consecutive years is enough to prove the trend. parents and students "vote with their feet", which is the most honest.

the answer to why civil engineering majors are unpopular is very simple.

with the end of the era of large-scale infrastructure and the downturn in the real estate market, civil engineering majors have also entered an "ice age".

this is directly reflected in employment. 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 has been decreasing, and the decline in this proportion over the past five years is the first among the 46 occupational categories.

why did they “run away”? the sanlian weekly report on the engineer who fell from the building, jin hui, mentioned that “the unequal salary system and long working hours in the construction industry did not bring good returns”, which may be the best summary.

for students majoring in civil engineering, if they work in a design institute after graduation, they may work 007 and earn two to three thousand yuan a month, and their performance depends on luck, which may be the norm in the industry.

sanlian weekly once introduced in detail the unique salary system of china's design industry. there are two salary payment models. one is "postponed payment", which means only paying a basic salary of two to three thousand, and the rest is paid in the name of quarterly bonuses, year-end bonuses, and monthly performance bonuses.

another type of "advance payment" is that the part of the salary other than the basic salary is counted as "the company's advance payment to employees". if the year-end project cannot be paid back and the output value does not meet expectations, the employees will still "owe the company money".

it is not difficult to see that no matter which payment model is used, it is extremely dependent on the repayment of party a. you know what will happen when the real estate market is in a downturn. one interviewee told sanlian weekly that "during his work, he could only receive 2,360 yuan per month, the minimum wage in shenzhen."

as for working hours?

"leaving get off work before 10 o'clock is considered early. one colleague left work at 3 a.m. for three consecutive months for a project. he was so tired that he vomited blood."

if you check the relevant news, you will find that this is also the current situation of many chinese design institutes. a top-tier design institute in henan was exposed to have low-level employees with a monthly salary of only 108 yuan, and even canceled their year-end bonuses; a fortune 500 design institute required employees not to leave work before 2 a.m. due to an urgent project, otherwise they would be treated as absent from work.

the entire industry is like this, and individuals seem very powerless in the tide. behind the infrastructure maniacs are ordinary people who have already been exhausted.

if a student majoring in civil engineering wants to join a construction company, then "hardships are hardship, and more hardship is hardship" is what he will encounter. in terms of working environment, it is either in the suburbs or deep in the mountains and forests. the company has a new job every three months and a new staff every five months.

image source: internet screenshot

in terms of work intensity, 996 is rare, 7107 is normal, girls are treated like boys, and boys are treated like animals.

image source: internet screenshot

if you ask about salary, 3,000 yuan cannot attract a migrant worker, but 600 yuan can attract a college student.

image source: internet screenshot

if you ask about the prospects of the industry, after 20 years of rapid development, the industry has long been saturated, and there are very few opportunities for young people to succeed. there are a lot of people in their thirties and forties who are still staying at construction sites.

as for personal emotions, single people can't find girlfriends, and married people can't be with their wives and children. they are all alone and spend less time together than together.

the construction site still has a lifelong responsibility system. if you are not careful, your youth will be spent operating a sewing machine.

netease data reading joked that "drawing designs while enjoying the air conditioning and pointing out the way forward with a blueprint in hand are just wild fantasies before employment;

pouring concrete under the scorching sun, sweating, and in the dust, breathing and living with putty powder and formaldehyde, is the norm for civil engineers. "

these "jokes" are not false.

in order to solve the enrollment problem of civil engineering majors, major universities have come up with various methods.

among them, it is a common practice to put civil engineering and other majors in the same category. for example, tsinghua university has implemented the large-category admissions training and management since 2017, and has merged the original single majors such as civil engineering, water conservancy, and engineering management into the large-category major name of "civil engineering, water conservancy and marine engineering", and no longer recruits students separately.

hunan university, also a 985 university, has also combined civil engineering, building environment and energy application engineering, and water supply and drainage science and engineering into a civil engineering major for unified admissions. sun yat-sen university, known as the "pillar of the south", will bundle together artificial intelligence, software engineering, microelectronics science and engineering, remote sensing science and technology, civil engineering, and water conservancy and marine engineering in 2021.

tongji university, which ranks first in the world in civil engineering, has been carrying out reform and innovation in parallel. on the one hand, it has carried out teaching reform for the original civil engineering major and formulated a personalized talent training program for civil engineering + n for students to choose from. for example, it has jointly opened a mathematics and physics intensive class with the school of mathematical sciences, a mechanics experimental class with the school of aeronautics and astronautics and mechanics, and an innovation and entrepreneurship class with the school of innovation and entrepreneurship, etc. after studying in relevant colleges and departments for the first two years, students can transfer back to the school of civil engineering to study.

on the other hand, tongji university was the first in the country to open an intelligent construction major under the school of civil engineering to cultivate compound talents and realize the general trend of deep integration of artificial intelligence and construction requirements. after tongji university, many universities and colleges rushed to apply for it, and the number of colleges and universities approved for intelligent construction majors has increased year by year in recent years.

although this move may seem like "changing the soup but not the medicine", the enrollment effect is good. according to a document released by the ministry of housing and urban-rural development, the national intelligent construction major will enroll 3,562 people in 2022, and the number will increase to 5,539 in 2023.

relatively speaking, more universities without traditional civil engineering advantages have chosen to cancel their majors.

in january this year, the degree evaluation committee of beijing university of aeronautics and astronautics agreed to cancel the master's degree category of civil engineering and water conservancy. also this year, ningbo university, chongqing jiaotong university and sichuan university all cancelled their urban and rural planning majors.

as the times change, colleges and universities can only adapt to the trend and survive.

once upon a time, civil engineering and architecture were also the most popular majors.

some people call the period from 2006 to 2015 the "golden decade of construction and civil engineering."

at the turn of the century, with the strong advancement of urbanization in china, and with the 2008 "4 trillion yuan investment plan" invested in the construction of affordable housing and major infrastructure such as railways, highways, airports, and water conservancy, the real estate boom and infrastructure boom reached a climax.

skyscrapers rose from the ground and bridges set records, and the name "china speed, infrastructure maniac" was born.

this is also the best time for civil engineering students. numerous construction projects have created a huge demand for students majoring in civil engineering, architecture, urban and rural planning, etc. in the face of strong market demand, civil engineering and architecture majors are synonymous with job security.

at that time, there was sufficient construction funds and many projects, but there was a serious shortage of talent in the civil engineering industry. many college students majoring in civil engineering went directly to project sites after graduation and became chief engineers or project managers after working for a few years. many of them had an annual salary of one million, and they were known as "three generals and five items" in the industry.

ma dugong, a self-media person who graduated from tongji university with a degree in civil engineering, once recalled,

"i graduated from university in 2002, and china railway first bureau came to recruit graduates. they didn't even look at grades. once you signed, you were given a resettlement allowance of 10,000 yuan, which was higher than china's per capita gdp in 2002. as for less famous construction companies, some promised to give you housing, and also promised to immediately arrange for you to bring your girlfriend to work in the system."

such generous treatment attracted more and more high-scoring candidates, and a large number of top scorers in the college entrance examination rushed to enter civil engineering majors. the eight old schools of architecture were even more crowded with top scorers from various provinces. major universities followed the trend and competed to open related majors, which were even more than today's computer majors.

there are figures that can indirectly reflect the enthusiasm at that time. before 2008, there were 392 undergraduate colleges and universities offering civil engineering majors; as of the end of 2022, the number of relevant colleges and universities has reached 572, an increase of nearly 200 in 14 years.

however, large-scale infrastructure and urbanization always have an end. as the national urbanization rate has increased from 36.09% in 2000 to 66.16% in 2023, as the national railway operating mileage has exceeded 155,500 kilometers, as the country's development model has transformed and the real estate market has been sluggish, the market demand for civil engineering graduates has begun to decline, and civil engineering has inevitably begun to decline.

in the first seven months of this year, the newly started housing area in china was only 437 million square meters, a year-on-year decrease of 23.2%, returning to the level of 20 years ago. the enthusiasm of contractors to acquire land has also continued to decline. in the first seven months, the investment in housing development decreased by 10.2% year-on-year. the civil engineering engine has stopped.

last summer, fushun city architectural design institute co., ltd. issued a "letter to all employees", announcing that all employees would implement a three-month unpaid leave arrangement. the first sentence was quite eye-opening.

"a prosperous era for our architectural design industry has come to an end."

times have really changed. in sharp contrast to the continued lack of popularity of civil engineering majors, the admission scores of police academies in many places have been rising year after year.

the number of admissions to the chinese people's public security university in sichuan exceeded 10,000 last year, and this year it rose by more than 1,000 and 638 points. the admission ranking of the beijing police college rose by more than 2,500.

jiangsu police college attracted a large number of candidates with scores above 600 this year. netizens jokingly called it the third 983 university in jiangsu after nanjing university and southeast university.

the chill in the job market has obviously spread to college entrance examination candidates. rather than graduating from a 211 university and not being able to find a job, it is better to choose a police academy and secure a job in advance.

in addition to police academies, majors with relatively stable employment, such as teacher training and clinical medicine, are also very popular among candidates, and the admission scores continue to rise.

the whole society is seeking stability, and in this atmosphere, no one is standing out. but is this really stable?

there is a famous spider web theory in economics, which refers to the "existence of the production cycle". if you choose to increase investment because the current market is booming, there will often be a surplus after production is completed.

the same is true for choosing a major. in the face of the complicated and confusing trend, the current popular majors may not always be successful.

if you graduated in the late 1990s and worked in civil engineering, the golden period of your career basically coincided with the era of large-scale infrastructure construction, and even if you were a college student, you could still enjoy the full benefits of the era. however, if you entered school in 2013, after 5 years of undergraduate study and 2 years of master's study, even if you graduated from tsinghua university, you would probably only be able to find a job with low income and frequent overtime.

in the face of the tide of the times, even a "professional" like zhang xuefeng still strongly recommended civil engineering in 2020 on the grounds that "urbanization rate still has room to rise." those students who followed zhang xuefeng's advice and applied for civil engineering are probably feeling "a mess" now.

the economy has cycles and prosperity is difficult to sustain forever.

instead of waiting to become the "pig on the wind", the best way is probably to bet on the field you are best at and become the "number one" in one of the 360 ​​industries.