Postgraduate politics and sociology programmes are tackling issues that are increasingly becoming public policy priorities for governments: the environment, pollution and public security, health care, heritage preservation and development, and infrastructure.
At City University, most of the students taking the two-year part-time master's in public policy and management are in full-time employment, said Brian Brewer, associate professor in the faculty of humanities and social sciences, department of public and social administration. The majority of them work for the Hong Kong government while others work in public organisations such as the Hospital Authority or in administrative positions in universities and other institutions.
Admissions to the City University master's programme last year were as follows: government civilian officers and members of the disciplined services (59 per cent); public organisations (5 per cent); social service organisations (5 per cent); private sector (11 per cent); unemployed/full-time students (11 per cent); and the education sector (9 per cent).
The master's degree is a two-year part-time programme with a summer semester between the first and second years. Students study several courses including the theories of government and public administration, values and choice in public and social policy, human resources management, public budgeting and management of financial resources, and the nature of public policy development. They are also introduced to research methodology in a course intended to help them prepare for their dissertation or capstone project.
At the end of the first semester, a special feature of the programme sees the students pursue a residential session outside Hong Kong. In recent years, this has taken place in Singapore, where the students engage in several exercises and comparative work.
'We choose a number of policy issues and direct students to look at how they are managed in Hong Kong compared with Singapore. We ask the students to look into the future and identify the important public policy issues that will have to be addressed by government,' Professor Brewer said.
One of the latest developments with the City University master's programme is to allow students to complete it in one year on a full-time basis. 'We want to make it available to students who want to do a master's full time. The first year we offered it full time we had two students and this past year we had four students; several of them from mainland China.