The Seminar on Postgraduate Education Reform of the College of Comparative Law, as the fifteenth Great Debate on the Reform and Development of Postgraduate Education of the University, was held on Xueyuanlu Campus on the morning of 30 Oct, 2020.
Dean of the Graduate School, Associate Dean Li Shuguang, Associate Dean He Xin, Associate Dean Liu Chengwei, Assistant to the Dean Xiao Baoxing, Deputy Director of the Department of Development Planning and discipline Construction Zhu Shuai, Deputy Director of the Training Office of the Graduate School Peng Jiao visited the College for research. Dean of the College of Comparative Law Xie Zhiyong, Chair of the College Council Wang Fang, Associate Dean Xie Libin and heads of each institute of the College attended the seminar.
Wang Fang moderated the meeting. She expressed her sincere hope for promoting the reform of postgraduate education and teaching through this survey.
Li Shuguang first introduced the purpose and focus of the meeting and explained several documents jointly issued by the Ministry of Education, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Finance, including “Opinions on Accelerating the Reform and Development of Postgraduate Education in the new Era”, “Accelerating the High-Quality Development of Postgraduate Education in the New Era”, “Opinions of the Ministry of Education on Strengthening the Management of Doctorate Students’ Supervisor Positions”, “Opinions of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council & the Ministry of Education on Further Standardizing the Quality Management of Degrees and Postgraduate Education” and “Programme for the Development of Postgraduate Education for Professional Degrees” ( “1 + 4” document) .
Li emphatically explained the “Ten Major Special Actions” to implement the “Opinions”, highlighting that the College should firmly grasp the good opportunities offered by a number of special actions, such as the action for the dynamic adjustment of the construction of a new mechanism for the management of the catalogue of disciplines and specialties, the action for the construction of integration of industry and education, and the action for the training of high-level personnel in core technologies in key areas. He said that these actions are of great significance to bring comparative law into the catalogue of secondary disciplines, to train international legal talents, and to build up a leading research team of “out-of-the-way” law in China.
He also stressed that the “1 + 4” document is also an important guiding document for the construction of an excellent team of supervisors, the improvement of the quality of high-level personnel training in comparative law, and the optimization of the construction of comparative law teaching materials, and that the spirit of the document should run through the whole process of postgraduate student training and educational and teaching reform.
Dean Xie Zhiyong expressed his heartfelt gratitude to the Graduate School for its long-standing support and high hopes for the College, and reported to the guests at the meeting on the overall situation of the college’s study of the “1 + 4” document and its exploration of the road to educational and teaching reform. Xie sumed up the experience of the college in personnel training and the construction of supervisor team, analyzed the crucial problems faced by various institutes of the college according to the advantages and shortcomings of the development of the college put forward by Li Shuguang, and reported the college’s discussion on the training plan and curriculum of the internationalised experimental class for rule of law talents. He said that the College would speed up the implementation of the experimental class training program, guided by the spirit of the “1 + 4” document and the content of this seminar.
Associate Dean Xie Libin believed that there are many points in the schemes of the “actions” concerning international programmes operation, making full use of foreign high-quality resources are in accordance with the development of the Institute of Sino-German law, which can be supported by policy to further expand the cooperation with the German Academic Exchange Center (DAAD) and to introduce more high-quality programmes and curriculum resources for students. He suggested that supervisors should strengthen the guidance of scientific research and life to the students sent by the Institute to study in Germany and pay attention to the students’ mental health at the same time.
Subsequently, the heads of each institute in turn reported on their study of the “1 + 4” document. In the light of the specific issues of the discipline and the institute, they discussed in depth the measures to improve the quality of student enrollment, to optimise teaching arrangements for foreign teachers, to tap the advantages of interdisciplinary development, to implement the training plan for experimental classes, and to reform and innovate the country-specific law research and personnel training model, making full use of the advantages of the college’s teaching faculty and its international vision in order to make new progress in the training of foreign-related legal talents.
The seminar came to a successful conclusion in lively discussion.
