Chinese University of Hong Kong merges politics department into school of governance as enrolment declines
Hong Kong Free Press
The Chinese University of Hong Kong has merged its 54-year-old politics department with two newer programmes and restructured them into an interdisciplinary school of governance amid what it said was a shortage of student intakes.
Founded in 1970, the Government and Public Administration Department was officially merged into the new School of Governance and Policy Science (SGPS) last week. The school will offer an undergraduate degree of the same name alongside degrees in Global Studies, and Data Science and Policy Studies.
The new school “is a multidisciplinary endeavour to bring together students and researchers who aim to better understand and make a difference in our fast-changing world,” director Pierre Landry said in a message posted on the school’s website.
“Both the content of our teaching and the research undertaken at SGPS reflect the fast tempo of changes at the global and local levels that are reshaping governance, public policy, as well as domestic and international politics,” Landry, a scholar specialising in Asian and Chinese politics who joined CUHK in 2017, said.
The move to restructure the former politics department had been in the pipeline for two years and was approved by the university’s council in February.
In 2022, CUHK cited a decline in applicants to the politics department and the department’s long-term financial challenges as reasons behind the restructuring.
Carlos Lo, who was department chair from 2017 until ahead of the merger, told i-Cable last week the politics department had faced an enrolment “crisis” in recent years, which hastened the restructuring.
Lo also said the move would improve what he called an “imbalance” of politics over public administration in the department since 2010, as well as a weakening research capacity and a dwindling appeal to prospective students.
“I hope the Government and Public Administration Department can have a brighter future [within the SGPS], and that its appeal to students can be maintained and revigorated,” Lo said in Cantonese.
Speaking of the merger of three undergraduate programmes, Lo said the move would offer more courses for students and improve resource allocation. “We are building a large house. By not calling it a politics department but a School of Governance and Policy Science… it carries a stronger momentum,” he said.
Nicolas Tai, a student representative of the department, told Ming Pao that he hoped the new school could keep elective courses about Hong Kong politics, cultural politics and democratisation – topics that he said were characteristic of the curriculum offered by the department.
He also said he was concerned about whether the new school would be able to maintain its predecessor’s small-class learning environment if student numbers rose after the merger.
Tai said the new school would form a committee with representatives from undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and that he hoped a high level of mutual trust between student representatives and the school would continue.
CUHK’s politics department was one of the most historic political schools in Hong Kong, with graduates ranging from the city’s most prolific pro-democracy figures to Beijing loyalists.
Lester Shum and Lam Cheuk-ting, who are among 45 opposition figures convicted of taking part in a conspiracy to subvert state power under the Beijing-imposed national security law, as well as pro-Beijing lawmakers Priscilla Leung, Gary Chan and Tang Fei, are among its graduates.
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