As one of the oldest schools in UIBE, School of Public Administration (hereafter SPA) was firstly founded in 1974 as the Department of Customs Administration, which was then exclusively authorized to award the bachelor degree in customs management. With 40 years development and evolution, SPA has gradually produced a fully fledged framework of academic programs and degree system, and offers the Bachelor, Master, and Doctor degree to students in public management study, which embraces 4 majors at the undergraduate level, MS and MPA at the postgraduate level, and the public policy under the discipline of fiscal study at the PhD level.
For the sake of developing cross-disciplinary academic programs, SPA integrates economics, management, law, and social sciences into its teaching and research and established four departments, customs management, public administration, public economics, and public utilities administration. In parallel, various research clusters are set up such as the research centers on customs, guild and trade organization, and culture and leisure industry.
Currently, there are 45 faculties at SPA, including 12 professors (with 3 PhD Supervising Professors) and 18 associate professors. Moreover, the School invites over 10 world known part-time professors and foreign experts. Typically, SPA is honored to have Zhou Wenzhong as its Honorary President, who acts as the former Chinese ambassador plenipotentiary to the United States, the former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affair, and the General Secretary in Boao Forum for Asia. In the past 5 years, SPA has achieved great academic excellence, with its faculty attracting or participating in over 100 key research projects at the national, ministerial, and provincial level, publishing over 600 journal articles with high national impact factors, completing more than 10 influential research reports, and accomplishing around 60 monographs, textbook, and reference books, etc.
Historically, SPA has been maintaining close ties with varied Chinese ministries and central government authorities, such as Ministry of Commerce, General Administration of Customs, General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, and Ministry of Culture. At the international level, SPA enjoys the formal membership in the International Network of Customs Universities and is frequently invited to attend the annual conference of PICARD by WCO. Meanwhile, a series of new joint programs and cooperation are being developed between SPA and the International Labor Organization. Domestically, SPA has forged partnerships with China Administration Society, China Customs Society, China Association of Port-of-Entry, and other related NPOs and NGOs. For instance, SPA has initiated a strategic cooperation with the Information Center of General Administration of Customs and set up a think tank engaged in consulting and advising for international trade and customs service.
As another key issue on the school’s long-term development agenda, SPA also values extensive international cooperation and collaboration. Over the past decade, a wide range of joint international programs have been launched by SPA with universities from various countries, best exemplified by the student exchange program with University of Applied Sciences of Joanneum in Austria, joint dual MPA program with George State University in US, joint international MPA program with Northumbria University in UK. Moreover, new or renewed international projects on joint research and teaching are under way with American University in US, the Cologne Business School in Germany,University of Canberra and Monash University in Australia, and Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration in Switzerland.
