"My Child Is a College Student"... Sharing Even Dating Stories in a Group Chat of Hundreds of Parents

"Increase in 'Parent Group Chat Rooms' at Chinese Universities"

As the enthusiasm for education rises in China, it has been revealed that more parents are trying to manage their children's school life by using 'parent group chat rooms' even at the university level.

On the 29th, 'China News Weekly' reported that the topic "There are parent group chat rooms even in universities" has been attracting attention recently on Chinese social networking services (SNS). The media stated that parent group chat rooms, which originally existed only in elementary or middle and high schools, now also exist in universities, and especially these chat rooms are increasing in number.

There are mainly two types of parent group chat rooms. One is a chat room created by the faculty advisor of a college within the university. The main purpose here is to share school announcements and grades, with communication with parents being secondary. The other type is chat rooms voluntarily created by parents. These chat rooms are divided not only by university, grade, and college but also by class within a department. There are no school-affiliated teachers, and the characteristic is that parents talk among themselves about their children's academics and related topics.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

Zhou Ke (pseudonym), a sophomore at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, revealed that the parent group chat room created by the school was active even before the first semester of the freshman year began. The chat room included about 200 freshmen and 300 parents. When the school posted information such as announcements about department-related competitions and scholarship lists in the group chat, Zhou Ke's father reportedly sent messages like "Why didn't you receive a higher-level scholarship?" and "You should get along well with excellent friends."

Lin Hong, who has worked as a faculty advisor at a university in Heilongjiang Province for nearly 30 years, sighed recently that in the past few years, he feels like he has become an 'artificial intelligence (AI) bot' in the parent group chat rooms. Previously, it was enough to just post important announcements in the group chat, but now he has to answer anything parents are curious about. Complaints varied from people asking about military training schedules to those requesting photos and videos of dormitory rooms. Some asked for the class timetable every semester, and when they sensed their children lacked academic motivation, they inquired about requirements for civil service exams and other matters.

[Image source=Pixabay]

It is said that joining parent-created group chat rooms is even more difficult. Parent A, whose child was admitted to China Agricultural University, said that to enter the group chat room, they had to go through the host's 'screening,' and since the capacity was almost full, they were issued a waiting number. In voluntary chat rooms, there are parents who inquire about how to change their child's major as well as those who share their child's romantic issues. Several university faculty advisors claimed that such parent group chat rooms have noticeably increased since students born after 1995 ('95ers') and after 2000 ('00ers') began enrolling.

Professor Xu Lan of the Higher Education Development Research Center at Xiamen University said, "Many parents of current university students are beneficiaries of higher education. Therefore, they expect their children to replicate their own past success experiences," adding, "They want their children to gain an advantage in the 'resource competition.'" Bao Wei, associate professor at the School of Education at Peking University, explained, "Chinese society is currently undergoing a transformation regarding the scope of parental involvement. Today's parents perceive the high stress of employment and bring their concerns about their children's future into the university stage, deeply engaging in their university life."