The Pre-Defense of the 2026 Master's Degree Theses for International Students Successfully Held

On March 28, the pre-defense of the 2026 master's degree theses for international students was successfully held at Shanghai National Accounting Institute. A total of 32 international students from 13 developing countries along the Belt and Road participated in the pre-defense. The pre-defense committee consisted of professors from our institute and 15 experts and scholars from institutions including Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tongji University, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, and Zhejiang Gongshang University.

The cohort of 2026 international students began their academic journey in China in September 2024. To date, they have completed all required training stages in accordance with the institute's regulations, including course completion, supervisor selection, thesis topic selection and proposal, mid-term assessment, data collection and analysis, thesis writing and refinement, and anti-academic misconduct screening.

Prior to the official start of the pre-defense, the International Education Center organized a working meeting for all committee members. The meeting highlighted the new requirements from the institute's Party Committee to strengthen the education of international students to "know and befriend China," as well as corresponding reforms to the degree thesis process. The meeting also provided a detailed explanation of the pre-defense procedures and evaluation criteria to ensure the reviews adhered to academic standards while aligning with the institute’s objectives for international student development.

During the pre-defense, the international students presented their research findings one by one. Committee members offered detailed and constructive suggestions on each thesis from multiple dimensions, including the practical significance of the topic, the integrity of the theoretical framework, the scientific rigor of the research methodology, the precision of data analysis, the logical coherence of the structure, the relevance of drawing on China’s experience, and the accuracy of the Chinese abstracts and table of contents translations.

This pre-defense not only helped the 2024 cohort of international students clearly recognize the shortcomings in their research, urging them to further refine their theses and improve content quality, but also provided the 2025 cohort of international students, who sat in as observers, with a more intuitive understanding of the quality requirements, formatting standards, and defense procedures for degree theses, as well as a clearer roadmap for their upcoming thesis topic selection and research.

Moving forward, the International Education Center will continue to enforce strict process management, uphold thesis quality standards, strengthen the educational goal of cultivating students who "know and befriend China," and continuously enhance the quality of international student education, thereby contributing further to economic and trade exchanges and connectivity within the Belt and Road framework.