The Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (GSCASS) is the first graduate school of humanities and social sciences on the Chinese mainland. Founded in 1978, it is the only institution of higher learning directly under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences(CASS), China’s top research center of humanities and social sciences. The mission of GSCASS is to educate doctoral and master’s students in all disciplines of humanities and social sciences. Currently, the GSCASS has 38 departments with 80 specializations entitled to confer PhD degrees and 87 specializations entitled to confer master’s degrees. The GSCASS has 436 supervisors of PhD candidates and 495 supervisors of master’s students. In the past 30 years, more than 7,000 students have obtained doctoral or master’s degrees.
Cherishing the idea of serving the community, the GSCASS set up a training centre in 1988 to provide quality long and short-term training courses to the society. The centre has recently been renamed the Faculty of Continuing Education. It has at its disposal all resources of the GSCASS, in terms of either China’s first rate supervisors of graduate students or quality teaching and research facilities. The faculty offers tailor-made programmes to meet the needs of life-long learning of people from all walks of life.
The faculty administration is served by a General Office and Division of Human Resources.
The Division of Business Development is devoted to developing the new training programmes and training manuals.
The Division of Graduate Courses provides two-and-half year doctoral courses to people with undergraduate degrees. Presently such courses are offered in the two specializations of finance and industrial economy. Six sets of two-year mater’s courses are also available for the specializations of civil and commercial law, economic law, human resources management, journalism, finance and industrial economy. Depending on the needs, the faculty can add new sets of courses at the doctoral or mater’s level. At the successful conclusion of the study, trainees will receive certificates. Those who meet the requirements set by the Ministry of Education can write theses to apply for PhD or mater’s degrees respectively.
The Division of Enterprise Training focuses on meeting all kinds of training needs of large and medium-sized corporations. For years such large SOE as the State Import and Export Bank, CITIC Bank and National Forestry Corporation are its main clients for regular training of their middle-level managers. It also offers the Doctor of Business Management programme in cooperation with the Open University of Hong Kong.
The Division of Civil Servants Training is committed to serve the various training needs of the civil service and other public institutions. In recent years, it has also received requests from the logistics departments of the People’s Liberation Army for training of leaders and staff of the military colleges.
The Division of Industrial and Commercial Sector Training runs a MBA programme in cooperation with the Open University of Hong Kong. And beginning in 2009, it will offer a MBA programme certified by the Ministry of Education.
