College students, fresh graduates and former graduates are all conscripts after enlisting, and their service period is 2 years. However, the central government will implement corresponding tuition compensation and national student loan compensation for fresh graduates and fresh graduates of ordinary colleges and universities who are enlisted in the army. High school graduates who have been admitted to colleges and universities in that year retain their admission qualifications after enlisting and enjoy the national tuition fee reduction and exemption policy after retirement. For details, please refer to the Measures for State-sponsored Compulsory Military Service for College Students.

However, if college students (including college students) show outstanding professional and technical ability during their service in the army, the army will approve them to stay in the army and continue to serve according to the actual situation, and award them the rank of noncommissioned officers with corresponding grades.

In addition, there is another way for college students to directly become military non-commissioned officers, that is, in the annual recruitment season, college students can sign up for the recruitment of non-commissioned officers according to their actual situation, and they can directly become military non-commissioned officers after passing various physical examinations.

Non-commissioned officers, or "professional soldiers", have higher status than soldiers (ordinary soldiers). In our country, non-commissioned officers are generally selected from soldiers who have finished their service, and citizens with professional skills can also be directly recruited from outside the army to become non-commissioned officers. Non-commissioned officers do not belong to the cadre sequence and do not wear seniority badges.

The non-commissioned officer system is established and constantly improved according to the needs of our army's modernization. On March 7th, the first meeting of the Fifth the NPC Standing Committee discussed and adopted the decision on the military service system. The decision pointed out that in order to speed up the revolutionization and modernization of our army, it was decided to implement a military service system combining conscripts and volunteers. It is stipulated that according to the needs of the army, I can voluntarily change some conscripts into volunteers and keep the technical backbone. This is the embryonic form of our army's petty officer system.