General situation

The MPA Education Center of Zhejiang University was founded in 2001, which was one of the first batches of 24 national universities that piloted MPA education in China. The MPA program has successfully educated many governmental or non-governmental personnel in the field of public administration/affairs. Until 2014, the MPA program has recruited 3038 MPA graduate students in total and awarded degrees to 1873 qualified students. In October 2006, Zhejiang University, as one of the first 24 piloted universities, passed the national MPA teaching evaluation with the “excellent” (highest level) performance. In March 2009, the Western MPA Education Project (under the MPA program) of Zhejiang University won the first prize regarding the teaching achievement issued by the government of Zhejiang province.

Training goal

In order to cultivate the modern leaders and administrators with international vision, the MPA Center of Zhejiang University commits itself to provide qualified professional administrators with both talent and good virtue for the government agencies and non-governmental public organizations. Here, the students get updated theories on public management and public policy, master advanced analysis methods and techniques, and are proficient in certain specific policy areas, such as politics, administration, social affairs, land and other natural resource use. The center tries to cultivate high-level, comprehensive and practical students.

Features of teaching

MPA of Zhejiang University insists on demand-oriented education and has 13 professionally specific fields, including Administrative and Public Affairs, Local Government Innovation, Science and Technology Education, Regional and Urban Economic Development, International Affairs, Land and Urban Management, Resource and Environment management, Housing Economic and Real Estate Management, Social Security, Risk Management and Insurance, Public Human Resource Management, Medical and Health Management, and the New Rural Development. The center aims to improve the students’ ability of solving practical problems in public administration by interpreting basic theory, analyzing the relative cases and doing more practice.

Requirements of dissertation

MPA graduate students must defend the proposals, and then master theses before graduation. The thesis topic should be closely combined with the practical affairs of government departments and non-governmental public organizations. And the deep analysis, detailed research and suitable solution on the problems existing in the public management should be included in the thesis. Finally, dissertation must go through three experts’ evaluation and pass the thesis defense.