As part of the Cultural History Forum held in Beijing on December 8, educationalists revealed the recent investigation results on the beliefs and moral quality of the city's university students. The Beijing News reported on December 9 that more than 80 percent of students don't agree that their personal interests should be a prime concern, according to the study.

Guo Shumin, a professor from the Beijing Union University, said that the investigation indicated that the mainstream of university and college students' beliefs and moral quality was basically "healthy and forward."

As for their understanding of beliefs, 85.25 percent of students from public and 77.71 percent from privately-run universities think beliefs are very important to self-growth. The majority said, "Once people have beliefs they'll strive for them and work hard to improve themselves."

In the multiple choice part of the investigation, 73.69 percent of students chose "to devote themselves to the realization of the country's four modernizations of agriculture, industry, national defense and science and technology" and "to love and contribute to the country".

In total 85.76 percent of students agreed that "the happiest thing in one's life is to serve the people wholeheartedly" and "one shouldn't put personal interests first.  Instead one should organically integrate personal with collective and state interests".

Of course, university students' beliefs are diversified, a trend which educationalists observed "need to be paid closed attention to." 

To the question on "your belief," 40.88 percent of the students surveyed answered "self-struggle"; 65.18 chose "more contribution and more gains"; 27.5 percent said "selfishness is people's innate nature so in society people must satisfy their wish by unscrupulous methods" and 13.38 percent agreed "to make a living by their abilities and thus there is no need to have any social aspirations."

"The negative data has increased obviously compared with that from the investigations conducted previously," said Prof. Guo. During a similar investigation conducted by the Central University of Finance and Economics and the China Youth University for Political Sciences in May 2001 for the question on "your orientation of beliefs", the words "political aspiration" ranked top on the list of answers accounting for 40.5 percent of those questioned followed by "power aspiration" accounting for 15.3 percent.

Some 28.7 percent chose "natural science" as their job ranking number one on the list followed by "entrepreneurs" at 26.5 percent and "politicians" on 24.3 percent. The numbers who selected "common laborers", "writers" and "poets" were few. The students "set greater store by politics," experts analyzed.

"When choosing an occupation, some students are keener on fame and wealth," experts said. They stressed that school education plays an important role in creating students' beliefs. Universities and colleges should arrange institutions, personnel, curriculum and related activities centered on students' moral education. In this way they could form an improving ideological and political work system, say educationalists.

(China.org.cn by Li Jingrong, December 11, 2006)