University Education in Public Administration
| Author | C. Grant Robertson |
| Published date | 01 October 1926 |
| Date | 01 October 1926 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1926.tb02277.x |
University Education
in
Public
Administration
L.
The Universities and Administrative Science
By
C.
GRANT
ROBERTSON,
C.V.O.,
M.A.,
LL.D.
Principal
of
the University
of
Birmingham
HIS
is,
deliberately,
a
very short paper, raising certain points which
T
seem to me to be of cardinal importance and which will probably
provoke some useful discussion.
It
is not necessary to emphasize
at
the outset the increasing desir-
ability of the study of administrative science. The growth of adminis-
trative services in this country
has
been one of the most notable features
of the
last
twenty-five years. Finance, Health, Transport, Commerce
and Industry, Poor Law, the Post Office with its complex activities, the
Services
of
Defence-Military, Naval, and Aerial-these are
a
few of the
chief branches of what are commonly called social services. They are
imperial, national, municipal, or local. And the result of this growth and
development with its steadily increasing number of differentiated yet
unified executives is that in
our
urban centres we have a large body of
men and women the one common characteristic
of
whose professional
life is that they are engaged in some form of administration.
How
far
this
growth
implies
a
revision
or
an extension
of
the older,
or
a
completely new, theory of the functions of the State I
do
not propose
to
ask,
still
less to answer. What
I
am,
briefly, concerned with
is
a
simpler problem
;
What
can the universities
do,
or, more accurately, what
ought the universities to do, confronted as they are with accomplished
facts-viz. the existence of this complex administrative machinery and
the existence of this vast body of men and women professionally engaged
in
some form of administration
?
We may simplify the problem somewhat by accepting two clear
conclusions. First,
in
so
far
as
administration requires certain types of
technicians-engineers, doctors,
lawyers,
chemists, botanists, biologists,
and
so
forth-the universities by their specialized studies and courses
are providing and can provide what the national government, muni-
cipalities, or country authorities may require. Secondly, administra-
tion means government, i.e. providing either what the citizen male and
female is conscious
of
requiring or what some organ of government-the
438
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