On September 1, 2018, An expert demonstration meeting on the qualification assessment for master’s degree authorization point in theSchool of Public Policy and Administration of XJTU was held in the teaching experiment center of the School based on theQualification Assessment Method for Degree Authorization Pointissued by the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council and the Ministry of Education of China, as well as the work program of Xi’an Jiaotong University on qualification assessment for master’s degree authorization point.
Professor Mi Jianing, director of the Department of Public Administration, Harbin Institute of Technology, was appointed as the expert group leader for the qualification assessment. Group members include Professor Fang Shengju, dean of the School of Public Administration, Yunnan University, Professor Jiang Xiaoping, chair of council branch of the School of Public Administration, Sichuan University, Professor Gao Weixing, dean of the School of Public Administration, Zhengzhou University, and Professor Wang Chunping from the Northwestern Polytechnical University. Representatives of the Graduate School as well as the School of Public Policy and Administration of XJTU also attended the meeting.
Professor Du Haifeng, the executive dean of the School of Public Policy and Administration delivered a speech at first, expressed his gratitude to the expert group for the work they are going to do, and introduced the development of the discipline of public administration. He expressed that, hopefully, this demonstration meeting would stimulate discipline construction and provide guidance for improving the quality of postgraduate education. Liang Dong, director of the Credit Office also expressed his welcome and gratitude to the experts. Professor Zhou Zhongliang, vice dean of the School, gave a comprehensive introduction of the master degree authorization points construction in the past five years. He presented from four aspects, including basic introduction, factors for drawing assessment, construction results and characteristics, and future improvement plan.
Through report listening, data referring, site inspection, as well as discussion and talks with teachers and students, the expert group all concurred in giving a “pass” to the qualification assessment for master’s degree authorization point.
The School of Public Policy and Administration owns the authorization to confer doctorate and master’s degree in the first-level discipline of public administration. It is also among the first batch of institutions with the authorization conferring professional master’s degree in MPA in China. The public administration discipline awarded class-A discipline in the fourth disciplinary evaluation, ranking top 5% among soft science subjects. Sticking to the educational philosophy of “seeking fairness based on accumulation of knowledge from different schools”, the School of Public Policy and Administration devoted to cultivate high level talents in this field. In recent years, the master degree authorization point utilized multidisciplinary methods to explore public administrative theories, methods and techniques with Chinese characteristics on the basis of the major practical problems and policy innovation demands in the process of social development and government management. It insisted on both theoretical and practice education to ensure education quality. This meeting reached its goal to stimulate the discipline construction and had a great significance for further development of this master degree authorization point.