Over the last week, university freshmen from all over the country have been arriving in Shanghai.

And it has long been a tradition for universities located in suburban Shanghai to provide a shuttle bus service to pick up new students as they arrive at the city's railway stations. This is especially welcome considering they will normally be carrying a lot of luggage for half a year away from home, and the weather will also still be very hot at this time.

However this year, Shanghai University has stopped the shuttle bus service. Instead they are sending along a number of volunteer students to the train stations who can advise new arrivals of the best way to get to their Baoshan district campus.

A free shuttle bus will now only operate between Shanghai University Station on metro Line 7 (the nearest metro stop) and the campus.

The university administrators told local media they think the move will encourage "independence" in freshmen in having to make their own arrangements.

To most observers it might appear that the university is simply trying to save money. And yet according to the university administration, this is not the case. In fact, they rather implausibly claim that running the shuttle bus from the metro station to the campus (a distance of 1 km) is actually more expensive than providing buses to shuttle students from the city's far more distant and central railway stations.

But even if we take the university at its word, I find the "cultivation of independence" explanation rather unconvincing.

To begin with, according to Shanghai University, among this year's 5,963 freshmen from 26 provinces, around 2,700 students - almost half - are from Shanghai.

So this move won't be instilling "independence" in any of these local people because they wouldn't be using the shuttle bus service in the first place.

They would hardly travel all the way to one of the outlying railway stations in order to simply get to another part of Shanghai.

And besides, most of them won't be transporting huge amounts of luggage on their first day because they can gradually move their belongings from home to dorm every time they go back to their parents.

So will the move be encouraging independence in the some 3,200 non-Shanghainese students who very likely would take advantage of the railway station shuttle buses?

In truth, many of the wealthier non-Shanghainese students can rely on their parents to help them with the difficulties of moving to university. They will either accompany their child on the first day, or will visit the campus at later dates in cars, which will allow them to bring items they were not able to carry with them when the student first moved here.

So this leaves us with the last group of students - those less well-off non-Shanghainese students for who the railway shuttle bus provides a real lifeline. They are almost certainly likely to be traveling alone, and carrying most of their yearly requirements because they are less likely to make frequent trips home. Their cash-strapped parents are also less likely to visit, especially if they are from a distant province. The cost of living in Shanghai will almost certainly be higher than their hometown, and they need every little help and financial assistance they can get.

So it seems the most vulnerable group of freshmen will be the only ones benefiting from Shanghai University's thoughtful lesson in "independence."

I suggest that university administrators should have thought harder about who this decision was going to negatively impact on before stopping the shuttle buses.