China launched an association on Monday to evaluate the quality of the nation's higher education.

"The association, as a non-government organization, is designed to evaluate and supervise the quality of higher education," said Lin Huiqing, an official with the Ministry of Education, at the launching ceremony held in Beijing.

The association is composed of over 200 educational institutions as members, including the Higher Education Evaluation Center of the Ministry of Education, Shanghai Educational Evaluation Institute, Peking University, Beijing Normal University, and others.

China's higher education has been blamed for a decline in quality since 1999 when the government started to expand college enrollment.

"Therefore, we should establish a nation-wide network to evaluate the teaching methods, development of each discipline and curriculum designs of each school," Lin said.

According to Ji Ping, a senior official in charge of the evaluation of educational quality with the Ministry of Education, China started to implement higher education quality evaluations in the 1980s, and decided to carry out evaluation once every five years since 2003.

"It is time for us to start a new round of higher education evaluations," Ji said, noting that the priority of China's higher education is to improve its quality.

"We have required the local schools to make regular evaluations themselves, and invite experts to carry out independent assessments," Ji said.

(Xinhua News Agency November 2, 2010)