With the college application season wrapping up, universities are now preparing to issue admission letters. However, many institutions are scaling back their printing projects this year. In Jiangsu Province, a university has halted its plan for customized 2026 admission letters, cutting a previously allocated budget of 245,700 yuan ($36,200). Likewise, a university in Henan has trimmed its printing costs to just 63,800 yuan ($9,400), about one third of last year's expenses.

To rein in the growing popularity of luxurious admission letters in recent years, the Ministry of Education called on universities to simplify these letters, returning to a one-page format, in a document issued in early June. Whether university admission letters should be lavish keepsakes or plain paperwork has sparked online debate.

Editorial (Gmw.cn): Laser printing, 3D pop-ups, Antarctic water droplets—admission letters have become an arms race of gimmicks. This is not sincerity; it is squandering public funds. With budgets drawn from taxpayers and tuition, universities should prioritize refurbished dorms, new library acquisitions and functioning classroom projectors—not one-off baubles.

The main reason for all these elaborate designs is to create a sense of ritual, giving students emotional satisfaction and providing parents with a keepsake they can treasure and share on social media. This psychological need does not emerge from nowhere—the college entrance examination has long carried the emotions invested by Chinese families over many years.

However, there should be a clear boundary between fulfilling this sense of ritual and engaging in wasteful extravagance. When universities turn admission notice design into a silent competition, this sense of ritual becomes distorted. In the digital age, it is worth questioning not only whether elaborate designs are necessary, but even whether a physical paper document is still needed at all to notify students of their admission results.

Worse, this competition forces underfunded colleges into a lose-lose choice: overspend to keep up or appear "shabby" next to wealthy peers. That distorts institutional reputation, measuring care by cardboard thickness rather than teaching quality.

Wang Feng (21st Century Business Herald): A simple admission letter can be beautiful in its own way. At Tsinghua University's archives, a complete set of new student admission documents from 1931 is carefully preserved. The set includes an admission letter, registration procedures and notes for new students, each just a single page long. There were no ornate decorations, yet the brief line in the admission letter, "You have been admitted," carried tremendous weight and meaning. This sense of cultural depth has endured through the years.

Since 2006, Shaanxi Normal University has upheld a touching tradition: Retired professors handwrite each student's name on their admission letters using calligraphy brushes. Every July, the university holds a special ceremony to mark this ritual. Some participating professors are already in their 90s.

After the Ministry of Education issued its notice advocating a return to one-page admission letters, many netizens expressed disappointment. To them, a university admission letter—something received only once in a lifetime—is not just a piece of paper but a token of more than a decade of hard work and hope. They worry that a single page might not capture all those emotions. Yet such worries seem unnecessary. For most students, what truly matters is whether they are admitted to their dream university and can receive a quality education, instead of the fleeting excitement of opening an elaborate admission notice.

The real keepsake is the achievement itself, not the box it arrives in. Universities owe freshers an honest, frugal first lesson—not a marketing stunt that turns higher education into a luxury boutique.

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson 

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