As announced earlier, 5 MPUP students were nominated to participate in the NASPAA-Batten Student Simulation Competition on 23 February 2019 in Sejong, Korea with coaching from Prof. May Chu, Assistant Programme Director of MPUP and sponsorship from the Programme. We are proud to give an update that the MPUP team is one of the Top 5 teams in the competition.

The MPUP team competed head-to-head with 12 other school teams, including National University of Singapore, Tsinghua University and The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, formed by graduate students in public policy and related fields.  Each school team represented a virtual country and four school teams represented a virtual world. MPUP team represented the virtual country, Durrit in the World 2 with Zhejiang University, Tsinghua University and KDI School of Public Policy and Management. The competition was a whole day event with rounds of simulation games for students to make policy decisions in designated theme areas based on real-world data, with this year’s theme on global migration and refugees. Each student in a team took turns to be different cabinet-level positions of the virtual country and each team entered their policy decisions to the simulation software to see how their policies affect various factors of the country including GDP, human right index etc.  The competition did not only require the teams to work with out-of-the-box thinking and professional co-operative skills, but also it required teams in the same virtual world to collaborate strategically to achieve win-win outcomes.

After the simulation games, the teams were asked to draft policy memos to evaluate their decisions made in the games and to give recommendations for future policymakers. Top scoring teams would be invited to present on their policy memos.  MPUP team, the other 3 school teams in World 2 and the National University of Singapore in World 3 were the Top 5 teams to present their policy memos.

Congratulations to the MPUP team again and we are glad to see the team’s hard work and efforts have paid off!