Understanding Excellence in Public Administration: The Report of the Task Force on Educating for Excellence in the Master of Public Administration Degree of the American Society for Public Administration

Abstract

Understanding Excellence in Public Administration, the report of the Task Force on Educating for Excellence in the Master of Public Administration Degree of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), has been received both well and controversially. Practitioners have responded warmly and positively to its serialization in PA Times. Most academics like it, although some have reservations, as they expressed during well-attended panels devoted to the report, which were held during the national conferences of NASPAA in 2008 and ASPA in 2009. Some of the report’s recommended actions, such as those that touch on accreditation, honest advertising, programmatic clarity, and core curricula, have spurred some debate. It is worth noting, therefore, that the Task Force members, though just five in number, are broadly representative of pertinent intellectual currents. The report reveals strands of thinking that are held by constitutionalists and communalists; by technocrats and philosophers; by management scientists and political scientists; by public administrationists and public policy analysts; by those who push the hard-nosed techniques of the New Public Management and those who favor the soft-schnozzed values of the New Public Administration.

This report is a first step. It is up to the professionals and professors, who are ‘public administration,’ to take the next steps.