About the Department of Public Administration

Our histories

At the beginning of the establishment of the National Open University （NOU,Taiwan）, in 1986,  only three departments were founded at the NOU, namely, the Department of Humanities; Social Science, and Business.

However, so as to respond to the University’s long-term developmental goals and the rapid transformations that the Taiwanese society has experienced in the late of 1980s, the University further established two institutions, which were the Department of Public Administration, and the Department of Living Science both in 1993.

It is important to mention that our department, actually, combines two different levels of educations in the Public Administration Science as the institution provides the Public Administration degree in the junior college and university levels.

A student could obtain an Associate degree in Public Administration if he/she successfully passes and gets 80 course credits.

If students continue to take courses at the department after graduation and could accumulate 128 course credits, then could be awarded a bachelor’s degree in the subject.

In addition, to enlarge the cooperation possibilities and provide more diverse educational channels for the Taiwanese government employees in fostering the life-long learnings and up-grading professional knowledges, our department further established several special course programs which especially designed for the Coast Guard Administration, National Fire Agency, and the National Police Agency.

The aims of the department are to provide a systematic knowledge of the public administration and public governance, the interactions between the Public and Private sectors, and a friendly environment in studying the subject for all people no matter in which ages and level of educations.

Our features of development

The department has educated numberless talents with the professional knowledge in the disciplines of Public Administration and Public Policy, and plenty of our graduates working for the government, different public and private sectors and the non-governmental organizations.

Our graduates’ outstanding performances do obtain widely recognitions in their work and professional communities. Based on the existing achievements, the department will continually be devoting to renew our instructional designs and mainly focus on satisfying the needs of adult and life-long learners by adopting innovative digital technologies to make more instructional materials complemented by the teaching schemes of offline and online courses.

In that way, students could take courses with more convenient ways and accessible educational environments.

The goals of our education

1. To increase students’ competitive capacities in the job market and encouraging their willingness of continuing for studying higher educational degrees like Graduate or Doctorate.

2. To cultivate students’ awareness of social caring and spirit of public service and further making students to have the capacities of making independent and critical thinking. 

3. To encourage students to cultivate their abilities of participating in the civil society and taking care of the public issues which they concerned and felt interested.

The core capacities

1. Fostering students to have problem-solving capacities with using the scientific methods and rigorous logics that learning from the Department and the learning experiences at the NOU.

2. Helping students to have the capacities of doing independent and critical thinking by applying the knowledge learned at the Department and University.

3. Encouraging students could have willingness to spend their time participating in the social and public affairs and devote their efforts.