Imagine a university where student numbers have doubled within five years. That is the problem facing Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology. Located in the industrial city of Baotou, a megacity built on mining, the campus typifies the overstretched state of China's colleges, particularly academically average ones.

　　The university now enrolls 19,000 undergraduates. With an average class size of 100, "students cannot get individual attention" and teacher training is a "total blank," says Zheng Wenguang, head of the higher-education department. When Zheng began teaching there in the 1980s, new hires spent two years as assistant instructors alongside a seasoned professor. Today new faculty members "go directly into teaching because student numbers are so big." he says.

　　Zheng is hoping to find some solutions to that problem by having his institution participate in a new student survey, which is created and organized by Tsinghua University and designed in collaboration with the influential National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), based at Indiana University, asks what students think of their education and how they spend their time.

　　The results will enable administrators to pinpoint problems and identify reforms that might improve teaching styles, course materials, and students' overall enjoyment of campus life.

　　Universities have wrestled with the twin problems of shoddy teaching and bored students for about a decade, says Shi Jinghuan, head of NSSE China's team, as the college-going rate has soared to 23 percent of 18- to 22-year-olds, up from only 6 percent in 1998. Overcrowded classrooms have contributed to the problem every bit as much as the traditions of rote learning and Confucian deference toward teachers.

　　China's Ministry of Education has done surveys of faculty members and administrators on its own for several years now, notes Shi, but they have focused primarily on "the standard of equipment and the basic infrastructure," things like the number and size of buildings, library space, or hours of computer training. Those emphasized the hardware. "Now we're focusing more on the software," she says.

　　Luo Yan, an associate professor of education at Tsinghua who helped develop the questionnaire, explains how attempts to improve universities have evolved: "First they build good dormitories, provide good food, and provide a very good library. This matches the national evaluation system, just physical things," she says. "Now they find students live in spacious rooms, and have many books to read, but they just don't."

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