School of Public Administration (SPA) of South China University of Technology (SCUT) was established in April 2009, formerly known as School of Politics & Public Administration (SPPA). The school consists of 4 departments, which are the Department of Administrative Management, Department of Social Policy, Department of Social Security, Department of Land Resources Management.

SPA has been authorized to offer a complete education system for undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs. It has a first-level discipline authorized to offer doctor's degree in Public Administration, with 4 research tracks in Administrative Management, Public Policy, Social Security and Risk Governance. It has a first-level discipline authorized to offer master’s degree as well as professional master’s degree in Public Administration. In addition, the school has opened 1 undergraduate program, which is Administrative Management. In 2018, Public Administration was awarded the Key Discipline of Guangdong Province. In 2019, the school was approved to establish a postdoctoral station in the first-level discipline of Public Administration.

SPA sticks to its educational guideline of "emphasizing moral character, building well-grounded base, strengthening ability and cultivating comprehensive adaptability", which has helped cultivating and improving students' comprehensive capabilities and qualities. This school year SPA recruits 1624 students at all levels, with 325 undergraduate students, 182 full-time graduate students, 1090 MPA students, and 27 PhD students respectively. Nowadays, graduates at all levels from the school are playing important roles in both local and central government, while others are constructively engaged in the activities of enterprises and non-profit organizations.

Currently, SPA has 64 faculty members, among which the full-time teaching staff amount to 52, including 20 professors and 17 associate professors; 91% of them have PHD degree. As for the academic background, the faculty members concentrate on Management Science, Political Science, Economics, Philosophy, Law and Computer Science, etc. SPA has 2 New Century Outstuanding Talents appointed by the MoE, 1 Pearl River Young Scholar, 1 professor reciving the government special allowance of the state council; in addition, a number of outstanding scholars and government officials are invited to be guest professors and adjunct professors of the school. All in all, the inter-disciplinary background and integrated talent resources actually constitute the great benefit for the development of school and related disciplines.

The main research fields of SPA involve regional development and public policy, land resources planning and management; government performance appraisal, HR development & management in public sectors, E-government and decision-making support system, etc. Since 2007, SPA has successfully applied for several National Social Science Foundation, National Natural Science Foundation as well as plenty of projects at all levels (provincial and ministerial research projects, horizontal tasks and commission projects); and hosted several academic activities of certain influence. A series of research results won the Excellence Award for Achievements of Humanities & Social Science at national and provincial levels, and some of them were published on leading journals such as Social Science in China, imposing great academic and social values on the practice. What's more, SPA also pays much attention to domestic and international academic exchange and cooperation, maintaining close links with several distinguished institutions home and abroad.

 SPA is located in No. 5 Building in Wushan Campus of SCUT, a classical and refined comprehensive building with integrated equipments, including an advanced E-government lab, a school library, lecture halls, teaching classes and staff rooms. All of those software, hardware facilities and resources have created comfortable environment and solid foundation for the further development of our school.

Up to now, SPA has developed into an important teaching, researching, training and consulting service center of public administration and public policy in south china. To achieve its far-reaching progress, SPA will unceasingly strengthen exchange and cooperation with academic communities and governmental institutions in and outside China, so as to jointly propel the sustainable development of public administration.

Chair of School Affairs Committee: Ms. ZHOU Qin

(update at October 22, 2020)