Incoming Student Profile: Jinglin Fu, Class of 2020

Jinglin Fu, Class of 2020, comes to the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy with a background in Chinese and English Literature. But her current career goal is to create public policies that will help families and seniors in China live healthier, happier lives.

As Fu explains, “I majored in literature at college and was fascinated by how stage plays mirror real life. I later joined the school drama club, where I began to write, direct, and act in some plays, hoping to convey my thoughts about public affairs through literature.”

She soon recognized, however, that although fictional drama might offer insights into challenging problems, it couldn’t create real solutions. Eager to make measurable changes, especially in China’s problematic health-care system, she decided a degree in public policy could help her achieve her goal.

Fu says, “While I was still very young, I first became aware of the difference government policy can make in the lives of individuals. I lived with my family in a pleasant community where our lives, and those of our neighbors, were comfortable and secure. But when I was around five or six,” Fu recalls, “things became much harder.”

She is referring to an economic reform China experienced that affected large areas of the population. Fu remembers vividly that one of her neighbors not only lost her job but, suffering from cancer, could no longer afford the expensive medical treatment. This memory stayed with her as an example of how people can be hurt by events over which they have no control — events that public policies perhaps could resolve in a more effective way.

“After taking a class as an undergraduate called ‘Institutional Analysis and Public Policy,’ Fu remembers, “I realized that public policy can play a significant role in the process of communication, negotiation, and reconciliation, which are indispensable in solving social problems. I began to see that a career in public policy would be the perfect way to channel my love of literature and passionate commitment to making a positive change into something that would produce real results.”

Her interest in pursuing an advanced degree was further enforced when she became a research assistant at the Center for Public Policy Research at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, focusing on health-care policy studies. One of her projects dealt with the integration of medical-care and elderly-care service policy. After interviewing local government officers, hospital staff, and patients from more than 20 provinces, Fu compared the health-care data before and after the policy implementation to assess the effectiveness of the program and found some serious problems.

Fu found that on the one hand, tertiary hospitals were not motivated to offer care services for the elderly because of their low profit margin. But on the other hand, the existing grassroots health-care institutions had the motivation but lacked experienced employees. The private health-care institutions had both incentives and capacity, and yet they had to cope with many constraints set by the local governments.

This experience demonstrated to Fu the potentially complicated web of vested interests involved in a public policy, and she decided to address the practicalities of public policy by pursuing further training in graduate school.

Says Fu: “I chose Harris Public Policy mainly because of its commitment to policy design as a science and its strength in quantitative methodological training. I know from my experience as a professional researcher that goodwill alone cannot produce effective policies. I am completely aligned with Harris’s philosophy that we need data analysis to assess the measurable outcome of policies.”

Another thing Fu found attractive about Harris was its Policy Labs. “They’re an ideal way for students like me to apply classroom knowledge to meet real policy challenges,” Fu says. “I also appreciate the tremendous flexibility Harris offers to choose electives in other departments. It means I can develop my cross-disciplinary interests on policy issues, thus enriching my general understanding of public policy.”

Fu says she was impressed by the “professionalism and excellence” of Harris’s introductory webinars. “I especially enjoyed reading their admission blogs during the recruitment process,” she says. “They helped me gain a comprehensive picture of how the MPP program looked and what life would be like on campus.”

Asked about her plans for the future, Fu says that after completing my master’s degree at Harris, she would like to work as a researcher or an analyst at an international think tank like the RAND Corporation or the Brookings Institute, where she could get international experience in designing, implementing, and evaluating health-care policy.

She envisions herself coming back to China and working for the government or in the private sector. “I hope to facilitate health-care reforms,” she says, “and break the administrative monopoly of public hospitals to achieve a freer flow of doctors.”

Concludes Fu: “Right now in China, there’s an uncomfortable relationship between patients who don’t trust physicians and physicians who feel overworked and under-appreciated by their patients. I’d like to help resolve these patient-doctor conflicts and also create a health-care market where for-profit and nonprofit hospitals can compete with equal status.”