Education for Public Service

EDUCATION FOR PUBLIC SERVICE THE GROWTH OF UNIVERSITY STUDY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND THE ORIGINS AND FOUNDING OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOLS OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND ADMINISTRATION LAURIN L. HENRY CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA DECEMBER, 2015 CONTENTS FOREWORD Ch. 1 THE PUBLIC SERVICE AND THE COUNCIL ON GRADUATE EDUCATION FOR PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION (CGEPA) Ch. 2 EARLY CGEPA YEARS Ch. 3 A MORE AMBITIOUS CGEPA Ch. 4 SEEKING RECOGNITION FOR PUBLIC SERVICE EDUCATION Ch. 5 FEDERAL PARTNERSHIP, LIMITED Ch. 6 TOWARD A MORE EFFECTIVE ORGANIZATION Ch. 7 NASPAA FOUNDED: THE PRINCETON CONFERENCE EPILOGUE APPENDIX: DATA ON GROWTH OF EDUCATION IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND ADMINISTRATION THE AUTHOR Laurin L. Henry (Ph.D., University of Chicago) began his professional career as staff assistant for the Public Administration Clearing House (1950-55), then was a research associate and senior staff member at the Brookings Institution (1955-64). He became professor of government and foreign affairs, University of Virginia (1967-78), and later was professor of public administration and dean of the school of community and public affairs,Virginia Commonwealth University (1978-87). He is the author of Presidential Transitions (Brookings, 1960) and other writings on government and public affairs, and has been consultant to several federal and state agencies, including the Bureau of the Budget, GAO, NASA, and the Office of Personnel Administration. He participated in NASPAA’s founding conference in 1970 and was president of NASPAA in 1971-72. Note: After another proofreading and a few corrections, this version differs in a few minor details from the one recorded earlier on cassette disc. 1 ! FOREWORD In 1986 the officers of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA) asked me to take the lead in a project to develop a history of that organization. The project had been started the year before by Robert F. Wilcox, who was NASPAA’s first president (1970-71), but was soon interrupted by Wilcox’s untimely death. My qualifications for the task were that I had succeeded Wilcox as NASPAA president and in this and other ways had been involved in the early years of the organization, while heading public administration and affairs programs at two different universities since 1967. I was glad to accept the assignment out of affection for Bob Wilcox and loyalty to NASPAA--plus, I suppose, a certain amount self-centered desire to re-live and see recorded some of the events in which I had participated. More importantly, it seemed to me that here was a piece of the generally neglected subject of public administration history that ought to be saved, and if I didn’t write it, who else would? I accepted the job with an understanding that it could not be a totally solo effort, and that I would be able to draw on the resources of other key persons. To launch the effort, NASPAA at its annual conferences in 1984, 1985, and 1986 had scheduled oral history sessions in which veterans of NASPAA and its predecessor recorded their memories and interpretations of what had occurred; transcripts of these sessions were provided to me, along with a few materials that had been gathered by Wilcox and a small collection of interview notes and materials assembled by the NASPAA staff. Individuals who had played key roles in this history were requested to search their files and send documents, and I received valuable contributions from Donald C. Stone, Henry Reining, Jr., Don K. Price, Don L. Bowen, and Charles Bonser. Stone and Bowen later read and provided comments on portions of an early draft. The contributions of these and many other persons are gratefully acknowledged. I did not promise immediate production and in fact got seriously into the project only after my retirement from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1987. At that time I re- connected with the University of Virginia, where I had been during my most active involvement with NASPAA, and for several years, until about 1993, enjoyed the privileges of a guest scholar at the Institute of Government (now the Weldon Center Center for Public Service). The assistance of that organization and its director of that time, Carl Stenberg, was invaluable. In that period I completed a draft of a history of the predecessor organization, the Council for Graduate Education in Public Administration (CGEPA), and of NASPAA from its founding in 1970 through its first adoption of standards for graduate programs in 1974. At that point I had a manuscript in five monstrous chapters, totaling almost 1,000 typed pages. One copy of this was deposited with NASPAA headquarters, which found no immediate way to use it, and except for drawing upon it for my 25th anniversary talk at NASPAA’s annual conference in 1995, the draft has been untouched until recently, along with several boxes of documents and related materials accumulated in course of the project. 2 In 2014, through the good offices of Harry Harding, then dean of the University of Virginia Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, I discussed with Laurel McFarland, executive director of NASPAA, what might become of these remains, including the source materials, which may be a unique collection on this aspect of public administration history. While agreeing to accept this material for deposit with NASPAA, she expressed interest in a more usable version of the history, particularly the part bearing on the founding of NASPAA. Consequently, in the past year and a half I have completed a rewrite to produce what I hope is a more accessible version of the first half of the old draft, culminating in the founding of NASPAA in 1970 (with a brief epilogue on how the organization survived infancy). The new version, somewhat shorter, breaks the story into eight chapters of readable length and is rather more interpretive and judgmental than the original. I have done it on the computer, enabling consistent treatment of such things as headings and footnotes, and the production of both a paper copy and a disc drive version which can be transmitted and made computer accessible. This version was produced entirely by reworking the earlier manuscript and its lengthy footnotes, without resorting to the source documents. I am sure it could have been improved had I done so, but I also felt that attempting a full revision of that sort would embroil me in an effort beyond my present capacity and never be finished. A few words about the content. The work has turned out to be both longer and broader, in several respects, than originally anticipated. In the first place, it covers a longer time period. It was clear from the beginning that the formation of NASPAA in 1970 was anything but an act of spontaneous creation. The founding was an evolutionary outcome of collaborative efforts of university people to promote and improve graduate study of public administration that had been going on since at least the mid-1950s. Sources for this early period were available, showing actions of some important leaders in the field who ought to be remembered. Therefore it seemed appropriate to go back and describe those efforts, revolving around NASPAA’s predecessor entity, the Council on Graduate Education for Public Administration (CGEPA). Because of this stretching-out, most of what follows here is NASPAA pre- history, leading up to and including the founding conference in 1970. Furthermore, the founding itself was more of a way-station than a destination, because NASPAA as first created differed little except in name from its predecessor. A period 0f consolidation and growth would be required until NAPAA could approach the more ambitious goals of those who had led the conversion from CGEPA, and begin performing the distinguishing function that characterizes it today. The last two chapters of the original manuscript covered the four years it took for NASPAA to grow from its infancy to early adulthood, signified by its first adoption of a declaration of standards for graduate programs in 1974. Some of this is summarized in a brief Epilogue. I would like to and may still do a re-casting of those chapters as well as extending the story until NASPAA reached maturity as a fully independent organization and an accrediting authority; because of age and other responsibilities I make no promises. Secondly, I found it difficult, or at least unrewarding and insufficiently explanatory, to focus narrowly on CGEPA itself. CGEPA (as well as NASPAA for the years of my study) 3 ! was a specialized entity within a broader organization, the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA). The history of CGEPA had to deal with its changing relationship with ASPA, which at various times was both nurturing and limiting; the overall story is one of CGEPA-NASPAA’s growing strength and autonomy until it finally broke the organizational tie and set off on its own. More significantly, CGEPA developed in a context of national events and forces that created both possibilities and limitations for itself and the university programs that were its constituents. These forces included major political events of the time; several aspects of federal government policy, including aid to higher education and its policies and practices for employee training; rapid growth of universities in that period, which made room for new and expanded programs of public affairs and administration; and intellectual and organizational developments specific to both structure and content of those programs. The story of CGEPA is primarily a story of response to, and secondarily of attempts to influence, those environmental forces. It has been a challenge to treat these contextual matters in sufficient detail to make CGEPA understandable without depicting it as a totally dependent variable and losing the acts and ambitions of its leaders in the historical shuffle.

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