A Comparative Study Of Student Experience Between A Public And A Private Undergraduate College

As China is entering into a mass higher education period, people's demand for higher education is more diverse, which leads to the encouragement and support of the country for various forms of running schools. With many years of efforts, private colleges and universities has developed from beneficial supplements of public education to important part of Chinese higher education. However, the over-growth of scale of higher education has also imposed challenges on its quality. The key element of higher education quality is the development of human. Students are the major receiver of school education; therefore, they are the main part of its quality and their evaluation should be part of quality assessment of higher education. Thus, this paper would investigate the education quality of private and public colleges from the perspective of undergraduates'experience in school.This research would mainly use questionnaire survey, taking public college H, and private college E as a case study; both schools belong to the second tier of higher education. Through the "Questionnaire of Undergraduates'Experience in School", I conduct sample investigation among the senior university students from the two colleges, to learn about students'evaluation on guaranteed conditions of teaching, training process and study gains. This paper tries to probe into the following questions:1. What are the experiences of students studying in the two selected public and private colleges?2. How do they differ from each other?3. What are the factors influencing their experiences?4. How to enhance the quality of training talents with applied competence?The first chapter is mainly illustrating the significance, relevant concepts and literature review, laying background and foundation for the whole paper. Based on the research purpose and research questions, the second chapter provides a research design including methodology, questionnaire design and the selection of research objects. The following third, four and five chapters would analyze the data of students'experience survey from three dimensions:guaranteed conditions, including infrastructures, campus culture and teaching administration; training process, including teaching process, practice teaching and teacher-student interaction; evaluation, including self-evaluation and comprehensive evaluation, and compare the similarities and differences between the two colleges. The last chapter concludes the findings of the survey of the two colleges and analyzes the reasons. Lastly, this paper would propose relevant suggestions for improving talents training quality, according to the "student-centered" theoretical foundation.The main findings of this paper are as follows.Guaranteed conditions:In terms of infrastructure, there are significant differences in the teaching facilities and student dormitories. Students from private college E are more satisfied with their school than students from public college H, except the library service and cafeteria. There are also significant differences in the campus environments, cultural atmosphere and teaching management. The students from private college E have greater satisfaction than students from public college H.Training process:In terms of teaching process, most significantly in the frequency of teaching of affiliated teachers, followed by teaching level, availability of public courses, pedagogy, teaching attitude and structure of specialized courses, the assessment from the students from private college E is higher than students from public college H. In aspects of practice teaching, students from private college E are more satisfied with the arrangements of experimental courses and internship relating to their majors. Teachers and students from private college E are more frequent in interactions than teachers and students from public college H, including discussion over course study, ideals and participation in research.Evaluation:In terms of self-evaluation, students from private college E give significantly higher assessment than students from public college H, in the ability evaluation, except for the moral standards and social responsibilities. And students from private college E are more satisfied in the comprehensive-evaluation part than students from public college H.