On August 27th, 2016, Prof. Weixia Lu from the School of Public Administration participated in “the 2016 National Work Conference of presidents from MPA colleges” hosted by the National MPA Education Steering Committee and organized by Renmin University of China. The main units and participants of the conference include the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the Office of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council, the Academic Degree Center of the Ministry of Education, members of the National MPA Education Committee, and presidents, vice presidents, or center directors of more than 200 MPA colleges in China. The conference was held at the Beijing Convention Center.
First, the meeting announced the appointment of members of the fourth MPA Education Committee. The chairman and deputy minister of Human Resources and Social Security Changxing Xin delivered a speech, followed by deputy chairman Qunzhou Chen, the vice director of the Academic Degrees Committee Office of the State Council Baoyin Huang, and president of Renmin University of China Wei Liu. They analyzed the current situation and task of MPA education and emphasized the importance of professional degree education.
Kaifeng Yang, the general secretary of the National MPA Education Committee and president of the School of Public Administration from Renmin University of China, interpreted the “2016-2010” development planning formulated by the fourth MPA Education Committee and summarized the national situation, pointing out the opportunities and challenges, and arranged the essential task in the future.
Mengquan Lin, director of the Evaluation Office of the Academic Degree Center of the Ministry of Education introduced the status of education certification, subject assessment, professional degree assessment, and the situation of China Case Center for Professional Degrees Education and the China Postgraduate Innovation and Practice Competitions. Deputy director Qunzhou Chen and Yan Jirong subsequently delivered their speeches. Then, the heads of the working groups of the Committee spoke in succession.
The conference also reported on the 2015 National MPA Special Assessment Report. This evaluation asked six schools to reorganize in deadline and announced the disqualification of four schools. Besides, it pointed out that it was about to evaluate the sixth batch of schools that have obtained MPA enrollment qualifications.
The meeting arranged the recent task that requires every professional degree authorization point to participate in three important activities. First, every college must participate in the collection activity of 2016 professional teaching cases in Chinese public administration; second, colleges shall organize students to attend the First China's Postgraduates Public Administration Case Competition. The main participants are enrolled MPA students or graduates; Third, each school should recommend one paper for the outstanding doctoral and master's thesis awards organized by Chongqing University.
The vice secretary Hongshan Yang demonstrated the work of the secretariat. In the afternoon, all participants were divided into eleven groups to discuss the work report of the education committee and then reported the results of their discussion. Each group discussed heatedly and exchanged ideas on many important issues such as MPA students’ enrollment and graduation thesis. Weixia Lu participated in the fourth group and reported the experience of the School of Public Administration of UIBE in applying for NASAPA certification and MPA nationalization work. The exploration of international certification and the nationalized joint development of our school is in a leading position among the national MPA colleges. Other units in the group highly praised our experience.
Finally, Kaifeng Yang, the general secretary of the National MPA Education Committee, summed up the conference and answered the questions raised by the groups. He forecasted the future work and mainly summarized in the following aspects: construction of MPA core curriculum, teacher platform issues, graduation thesis issues, enrollment issues, regional academic issues, international exchange organization issues, improving quality and internal strength, etc.
More than 250 participants attended the conference. The conference was quite rigorous with clear themes, rich content, enthusiastic discussions, and fruitful results.
