A survey of the KAIST students’ satisfaction level concerning cafeteria food and services was carried out during the lunch and dinner periods from November 8 to 10 at the respective cafeterias. The surveyed cafeterias are Samsung Everland’s Eastern cafeteria, Western cafeteria and Hanwha Resort’s Northern cafeteria.

The survey was carried out by the KAIST Cafeteria Monitoring Commission, which is run by the Graduate Students Council, with school funds. The purpose of the survey is to find out whether the students are satisfied with the current conditions of the cafeterias so that the positive points can be retained while the negative points can be worked upon.

The survey itself is run once every semester, two weeks after the mid-term exams. The students are provided with seven criteria for which they can give a score between one and five. After all the results are tallied for the year and averaged out, the cafeterias that score below an average of 3.0 for both general satisfaction scores and category scores are given a warning. If they fail to achieve a score of 3.0 for just one of the above scores, they are given a caution. If the accumulated numbers of warnings reach a total of three, a student-wide survey is carried out calling for a change of the cafeteria’s company. Furthermore, there is an additional section for comments and by writing in this section, the students can voice their opinions about what should be changed for the cafeterias. All of these comments are relayed to the respective cafeterias so that improvements can be made for the benefit of students.

From the 2010 results, all three cafeterias currently have zero warnings, but the Western cafeteria has one caution. The Eastern cafeteria received the highest general satisfaction and category scores out of the cafeterias surveyed in both spring and fall, while the Western cafeteria scored the lowest on all occasions. Also, the results show that the Eastern cafeteria improved in most of the categories while the Western cafeteria fell short in all of the categories in fall compared to their performance in spring.

The full results can be viewed at the cafeterias and at club.cyworld.com/rmkaist.