Where Has All the Public Administration Gone?
| Date | 01 September 2012 |
| Author | Alistair Jones |
| DOI | 10.1177/0144739412462169 |
| Published date | 01 September 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Teaching Public Administration
Where Has All the
30(2) 124–132
ª The Author(s) 2012
Public Administration
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DOI: 10.1177/0144739412462169
Gone?
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Alistair Jones
De Montfort University, UK
Abstract
For many years, concern has been raised about the demise of the teaching of public
administration. No longer is the subject taught in its own right as an undergraduate
subject in the UK. The emphasis has moved from administration to management. The
malaise in the teaching of public administration is such that the subject has almost dis-
appeared. It is time to re-visit the importance of public administration as a taught aca-
demic subject, and its importance in many other academic disciplines.
Keywords
public administration, teaching, undergraduate, United Kingdom
During the Public Administration Committee (PAC) annual conference at Birmingham
University in 2011, there was a round table discussion about the state of Public
Administration as a discipline. Concern was raised as to whether or not Public
Administration was an academic discipline in its own right, or whether it was a subset
of politics, business, or management. Such a debate is not new. It was around in the
early 1970s – as degrees in Public Administration started to appear. The debate was
revisited in the mid-1990s, noting the impact of New Public Management upon
traditional Public Administration. It is resurfacing again now, with the coalition
government’s attacks on the public sector, and the generally poor press that public
administration appears to receive. Also of concern at this round table discussion – and
expressed at that time – was that few of those involved saw themselves as teaching
conventional or traditional public administration at the undergraduate level! Hence the
title of this article.
Concern about the possible disappearance of public administration is not new. Such
concerns were being raised 20 years ago. What is disconcerting is that very little appears
to have been done to promote the teaching of public administration in the UK. The taught
Corresponding author:
Alistair Jones, De Montfort University, Hugh Aston Building, Leicester, LE1 9BH UK.
E-mail: anjones@dmu.ac.uk
Jones
125
academic discipline is strong across Europe and North America, but not in the UK. Some
of the reasons for such a situation are ideologically linked, as will be noted later.
The first centres to teach public administration
The institutions that first taught public administration were the polytechnics. These
institutions provided applied and vocational courses, as opposed to the more academi-
cally oriented courses in the universities. Many polytechnics established world-class
reputations within particular subject specialisms. For example, Leicester Polytechnic
was internationally renowned for its work in textiles.
There was also overlap, with many polytechnics offering traditional academic
degrees in, for example, politics, sociology, and philosophy; subjects are also offered by
the universities. Some of these polytechnic degrees were marketed a little differently,
offering a sandwich placement year in which to learn how to apply the academic skills in
the workplace. This binary divide continued until 1992, when the Major government
ended it.
The first institution to offer a degree in Public Administration was Sheffield Poly-
technic. This was in 1968. In 1970, Leicester Polytechnic became the first institution to
offer an honours degree in Public Administration (Greenwood and Eggins, 1995). In the
light of the Fulton Report, this seemed to be the dawn of a new era. The idea was that the
polytechnics would be training the new public servants with relevant degrees. Fulton,
after all, wanted to move away from generalist employees to something a lot more
specialised. One perception was that the new degrees in Public Administration would
include the managerial skills that were sadly lacking in the civil service at that time. The
reality was, however, that Public Administration graduates had little impact on the civil
service. Instead, these skills became useful for other parts of the public sector, including
local authorities, the NHS, social work, and youth and community work.
By the late 1970s, Public Administration was taught across the UK at the following
polytechnics or central institutions (the Scottish equivalent of a polytechnic):
Glasgow (Glasgow Caledonian University)
Leicester (De Montfort University)
Manchester (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Robert Gordon (Robert Gordon University)
Sheffield (Sheffield Hallam University)
Teesside (Teesside University)
Wales (University of Glamorgan).
Many other institutions took up the teaching of public administration. Not all of it was
necessarily ‘Public Administration’. Greenwood and Eggins (1995: 144–5) noted that in
1971 the City of London Polytechnic offered a BA degree in Politics and Government,
which included ‘preparation for public sector employment or private sector posts
involving work with government agencies’.
125
126
Teaching Public Administration 30(2)
There was an explosion of public administration courses in the latter part of the 1980s.
Again, these were not necessarily ‘Public Administration’ courses, but included politics,
public policy, public sector management, and policy studies. This expansion of both
undergraduate and postgraduate courses is examined in...
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