Journal of Public Affairs Education

It is generally agreed that diversity is a critical challenge for managers and that advancing organizational diversity is both an ethical and a pragmatic requirement for effective public administration. However, it may be argued that graduate public affairs education relating to human resource management (HRM) has not sufficiently attended to diversity topics and that public affairs graduate curricula in general have not evidenced sufficient inclusion of diversity themes. This essay indicates a need for curricular revision that includes diversity competencies. The research and corresponding analysis is presented in two parts, corresponding to two phases of research. The first addresses findings from graduate student surveys conducted over three years at the University of Vermont. The second concerns data collected from 41 NASPAA-accredited and 17 unaccredited NASPAA-member programs in public affairs. The results from the first phase suggest that graduate public affairs students need greater exposure to diversity themes and issues. The second phase results suggest that NASPAA-accredited programs are not much different from unaccredited member programs in incorporating diversity topics into curricular offerings or otherwise exhibiting a commitment to diversity. The essay ends with several recommendations for programs intending to develop or revise their public policy and administration curricula in order to better attend to diversity concerns.

Since its inception, the discipline of public administration has been challenged by its dual mission of educating both practitioner and academician (Golembiewski, 1977; Denhardt, 2001). Normative issues such as ethical behavior, social equity, and the impact of diversity on public institutions and policies are matters that conjoin public administration scholarship and practice. However, these subjects are not standard in the public administration education curriculum. Ethics and social equity have received intermittent attention in the professional journals and in the curriculum offerings of schools associated with the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA; Bowman, 1990; Lee and Paddock, 1992; Gooden and Myers, 2004). This study explores the question of whether the issue of diversity has received similar attention in public administration education. After reviewing the curricula at 50 NASPAA accredited-schools, this study concludes that teaching diversity in the public administration/public affairs curriculum is not, in fact, overlooked. However, our finding that the topic of diversity is relatively neglected in the published scholarship indicates a need for public affairs education programs to support such scholarship.

Demographic changes and growing cultural diversity in the U.S. population have resulted in a greater possibility that, during a service delivery encounter between client and public agency provider, there will occur an exchange involving different cultural backgrounds, material realities, beliefs, practices, behaviors, and language. This increasing cultural diversity raises several important questions about the future role of public administration and the delivery of culturally appropriate and culturally responsive public services. These questions, which focus on the central issue of cultural competency in public administration and public service delivery, include What is cultural competency in public administration and public service delivery? Can public agencies become culturally competent organizations? What self-assessment tools and performance measures will improve an agency’s ability to provide culturally appropriate and responsive services? This paper addresses these questions by providing a definition of cultural competency in public administration and public service delivery and by identifying self-assessment tools and performance measures that can assist public agencies in moving toward cultural competency in delivering public services and programs.

The National Academy of Public Administration’s Board of Trustees recently adopted social equity as the fourth pillar of public administration. Human resource management (HRM) courses are situated to increase the public affairs graduate curriculum’s emphasis on social equity, because these courses already give attention to related concepts such as due process, discrimination, sexual harassment, and work-life policies. The challenge is to directly apply this pillar in the HRM curriculum by strengthening students’ exposure to formal and informal personnel policies and practices that promote or impede social equity. Drawing on our teaching experiences, we describe how HRM professors can enhance their students’ social equity competencies by incorporating the use of informal “HR dialogues” in their courses. These dialogues allow students to develop managerial competencies to handle the real-world social equity tensions and resistance they are likely to encounter.

This article proposes a structured approach to the creation of a formative, competencies-based model of public affairs education. With it, public affairs education would become more attuned to the demands of a public service responsive to the citizenry, pursuant to the duties of public officials. The paper examines, in particular, the challenges presented in this context by the rapid development of electronic governance. There is an important difference between incidental or improvised approaches to education for the public service and deliberate approaches built on precise strategic objectives. The proposal presented here builds on a critical premise, namely that the demands placed on public officials by electronic (or digital) government constitute a challenge of the first magnitude, one that will radically alter the relationship between the state and civil society, that is, the political and administrative functions of the state. The potential impact of emerging information and communications technologies on public affairs education and on public administration is limitless and all but unimaginable.

Graduate schools in the United States have made a philosophical commitment to support greater diversity, including attracting and retaining students of color. With an increasingly diverse U.S. population, recruiting and retaining a diverse student body is critical. This paper offers some practical suggestions for accomplishing at goal, based on the author’s practical experience with adult students.

Significant amounts of research have suggested how important mentoring is to success in academic careers. Studies have also explored the unique issues that arise for women and minorities in mentoring situations (Chandler, 1996). This study utilizes Kram’s (1988) mentoring functions as a framework for analyzing mentoring relationships for minority and female doctoral students in public administration and public affairs programs. It also adds to the empirical evidence of the importance of mentors for women and minorities pursuing academic careers and the unique situations they face. Survey data is collected from current high-performing women and minority students who are preparing for research careers in academia. Survey responses are supplemented with notes of interviews between students and mentor program coordinators. After an analysis of the surveys and transcripts from women and minority students currently in mentoring relationships, suggestions are provided for how public administration and public affairs schools can use this information to improve the retention and success of minority and female doctoral students pursuing academic careers in our discipline.

This article serves as an exploration of issues of recruitment into and retention of minority doctoral candidates in the fields of public administration and public affairs. It builds off of a need recognized in several reports that argue for increasing the diversity of faculty members in a number of academic disciplines. Drawing on survey responses from doctoral program advisors, current doctoral students from underrepresented communities, and people from underrepresented communities who are considering doctoral programs, the article explores key factors that might affect strategies for enhancing the recruitment, retention, and completion strategies for minority doctoral candidates in public administration and public affairs.

The American Society for Public Administration and the National Academy of Public Administration, as well as several leading authors in our field, have expressed support for a range of ethical principles, including representativeness, diversity, affirmative action, equality, fairness, and justice. Various social equity reformers have argued that universities should expand their integrative efforts to include more students of poverty and working class origins. This study surveyed the nation’s 50 top-rated MPA schools, asking whether they collect data about their students’ socioeconomic backgrounds. While other academic disciplines have initiated social class-based affirmative action plans for enrolling students, none of the 43 survey respondents said they do so. The discussion closes by suggesting that, with this study’s evidence and justification in place, academic public administration, driven by its commitment to the discipline’s acknowledged ideals, has a sound rationale for establishing economic affirmative action plans for student diversity purposes.