The truth is, supervision in universities is often limited to inspections and making suggestions, because the institution and human resources departments, and the disciplinary inspection commissions decide how the lawbreakers should be punished. Besides, supervision of college staff can hardly be called efficient, because it is mostly ex post facto and conducted after the misdeeds are exposed.

This calls for the establishment of an independent and exclusive organ, like the board of supervisors that normally applies to financial institutions in universities as well. Moreover, the board of supervisors should be an independent organ not affiliated to any university authority, and its position and functions must be made clear in accordance with relevant laws and university statutes. And by legislating its independence, the authorities can ensure it exercises the right to supervise the administrative power without being weakened.

Such a board's organizational architecture and personnel, too, should be carefully and independently designed and chosen. Candidates for supervisors' positions can range from government representatives and university faculty members to alumni and students. Of course, they have to meet certain qualification requirements, such as having sound auditing, financial, and legal knowledge. As for external supervisors, they could be introduced to the board to enhance its independence and impartiality.

It is also important to define the board's supervisory functions and procedures, which are mainly targeted at universities' major decisions and financial matters. In other words, such a board should be able to legally exercise its right to inspect, investigate, suggest and decide the extent of punishments, without any university official's intervention.

Also, the officials of affiliated institutions need to be put under the same supervision. That being said, any violation of laws and the Party discipline should be reported to the university president, and it should be directly dealt with by the board if administrative infractions and abuse of power are involved.

Of course, the board must abide by relevant laws while performing its duty, and stay neutral by not engaging in decision-making and routine operations of the supervised university. To bolster the board's key supervisory role, public universities, on their part, are obliged to keep improving disciplinary inspection and supervision, intra-Party supervision, on-campus democratic supervision, and the auditing system.

The author is an associate researcher at the Law School, Hunan University in Hunan province.