Journal of Public Affairs Education

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The Sue and Radcliffe Killam Library is located on the Texas A&M International University campus in Laredo, Texas.

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Val Escher

This article describes the evolution of public administration education and training in Nigeria through an exploratory method of inquiry. It traces the practice of public administration through the British superstructure and the indirect system of local administration created in the 1900s, which ended in 1960 when the country gained independence from Britain. As a multiethnic nation, Nigeria has experienced various forms of government and administrative reforms that not only affected the evolution of public service, but continued to pose serious challenges for universities and other institutions charged with public administration education and training. On the basis of lessons learned from public service reforms and pedagogical approaches and methods, the analysis concludes by offering recommendations for improving the public administration curriculum in Nigeria.

In more recent times, education and training in public administration have become very important because the public service is expected by the citizens to provide value for money spent. In developing countries, and especially in Africa, in view of the numerous developmental challenges, the call for effective public administration education and training has been extremely intensified. Consequently, there is the need to examine what governments are doing in this regard and whether initiatives being undertaken will yield the needed results. In this paper, the intention is to examine the challenges to and future prospects of public administration education and training in Ghana. What, exactly, are the major challenges facing public administration education and training in Ghana? Are there, indeed, any prospects for those pursuits? How can such education and training help in establishing the developmental state for which many, including international organizations, are calling?

This paper identifies strategies that public administration programs in Africa can adopt to position themselves to meet present and future challenges. Using the Getting to Outcomes® model as a frame of reference, it shows how public administration programs can adapt this model in framing a program assessment plan with the active engagement of stakeholders. The paper focuses on how to assess public administration professionals’ learning outcomes to continue performance improvement, make programs more relevant to stakeholders, and help in addressing the challenges of growth and development.

South Africa is a developmental state that suffers from a lack of management capacity in the public service. Hence, a national imperative focuses on addressing talent management and building a cohort of qualified and competent public servants. The synergistic link between public sector management and the content of public administration can be associated with and contribute to addressing critical skills shortages in the public service. Training in this regard with the demand for and supply of competent managers raises some serious consideration. Given that academicians and scholars often criticize the history and evolution of education and training in public administration as being overly administrative and outdated, how has the need for a transformative management-governance context advanced in South Africa? In this regard, a range of “soft skills” deemed necessary for the developmental agenda in South Africa is a focal point of contemporary public administration. From a training perspective, methodologies include problem-based learning, performance-oriented and situation-emergent training, project management approach to managerial problems, and emphasis placed on indigenous management knowledge in a developmental context. We hope that these innovative approaches would address the wide managerial gap in the public administration environment.

The quality of governance and teaching public administration are two interrelated issues that were addressed together, especially in the case of an emerging country as Morocco (UN, 2007). Previous research shows evidence of a strong correlation between education and, more specifically, higher education, and the current stage of structures for the modern state through training (Jaramillo, 2013). This research explored the Moroccan experience in its endeavor toward a more democratic government through more effective public administration and the ability of public administrators to meet new and more complex challenges. This article discusses the evolution of the higher education system, focusing on the teaching of public administration. In the process of public sector leadership capacity development, both colleges and universities, and management development institutes, have critical roles to play. Morocco is an ongoing process as of 2014.

Geographical information system (GIS) technology is an interdisciplinary tool used extensively throughout the fields that typically comprise a public affairs education. However, to date GIS has not been pedagogically integrated at the program level. This article makes a case for a programmatic approach to GIS inclusion within the curriculum that fully integrates GIS within and between courses of a public affairs program with a focus on the NASPAA competencies that govern student learning and program outcome assessment. This is supplemented with an example from Indiana University Northwest that drove the impetus of this research, the changes the program led to in creating a GIS-based course, and the realistic limitations to full implementation in many programs.

Public administration scholars have long examined how doctoral students in public affairs are trained to become researchers. Our study adds to this body of knowledge by examining socialization and professional identity construction processes among doctoral students conducting public affairs research. We develop a multilevel model of the organizational, relational, and individual level tactics through which they learn to become researchers. In particular, our study offers insight into the interactions between students and faculty that contribute to their development, as well as into students’ own proactivity. Our study uses interview data from doctoral students in multiple disciplines who are conducting research in public affairs. We conclude with a discussion of our model and recommendations for doctoral programs.

This study examines the effects of a technology-intensive course design on students’ final grades in a criminology program at an upper-division university in the southwest. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses indicated that the presence of a technology-intensive curriculum alone did not significantly improve student performance. However, interaction effects revealed that the technology-based curriculum enhanced student learning for online students compared to those in hybrid and (FTF) courses although students completed fewer technology projects in online sections. These findings reveal barriers to teaching with technology that are not overcome through the use of systematic training for instructors and students. The study further reveals that adult and traditional learners do not significantly differ in learning when exposed to a technology-intensive curriculum or mode of course delivery.

What can traditional social science disciplines offer to contemporary nonprofit management education? We argue that the focus on context provided by traditional disciplines contrasts with operations-oriented approaches common to management education. Drawing on a sample of 110 courses from 22 programs, we illustrate the operations-oriented focus of current nonprofit management programs and discuss the likely rationales behind that tendency. We argue that nonprofit management education would benefit from greater emphasis on context-based approaches and suggest how traditional social science disciplinary approaches can be used to create distinctive nonprofit management courses. We suggest ways to integrate such courses into nonprofit management programs and consider what it would take to move the field of nonprofit management instruction toward a more integrated model.