Starting this year, more than 20 professors at Tianjin Commercial University may set themselves free from routine office jobs with the help of secretaries.
This trial addition of assistants is part of the educational reform of the university in north China's Tianjin Municipality.
According to the university, professors at the associate level and above who are in charge of key research project are entitled to choose secretaries from junior teachers or graduate students.
These secretaries, to be paid by the university, are asked to help their "bosses" deal with daily work in teaching and research.
Shi Ruijie, a law professor, is one of the first batch of beneficiaries as he is now in charge of a provincial-level educational reform project.
"In the past, I had to deal with piles of trivial things every day, like receiving phone calls and letters and photocopying, which occupied much of my time," Shi said. "Now, I can rid myself of these things and devote myself to my research."
Zhang Qian, a young teacher in the university and the secretary of Shi, also found delight in this extra job helping Shi conduct surveys.
"It's a win-win practice," Zhang said. "For me, it expanded my horizons and provided me with more opportunities to be involved in the latest research."
"The job of secretaries is something like those of assistants in the West," said Zhu Guanglei, a professor of Nankai University. He noted that this trial program represented the direction of the country's educational reform.
Currently in China, only a few professors, mostly academicians and those making great achievements in one certain field, are provided with secretaries. Most others have to deal with paperwork themselves.
Zhu noted that the structure regarding university teachers has been changed largely as now most universities only accept new teachers with a doctoral degree. The associate professors who in the past could share some daily jobs in a group are assigned with teaching and research themselves.
"Especially since universities began recruiting more students, the workload of professors has increased by a large margin," Zhu noted. "It's time to adopt some new methods to solve the problem."
In the past, one class only had some 20 students, but now some have more than 100.
(Xinhua News Agency March 24, 2003)
