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On the Need for Education, Not Just Learning: As noted earlier, the com-
plexity of the problems which public administrators face in the contemporary
world requires that, especially in their formative years, they have experiences
which prepare them to deal effectively with highly complex issues involving very
complicated problems of social and economic development. In terms of current
approaches to the education of public administrators, there is no doubt that in
many places in most parts of the world they learn a great deal in their academic
programs. Indeed, at present, most newly minted public administration education
graduates have learned much about many different things. They have studied how
organizations function (at least in the abstract); they learn about the budgetary
processes of government; and also about personnel management and the legal
framework within which public administrators must function. In some cases, they
have been taught about leadership and ethics and how to carry out complex policy
analysis techniques.
The key question for public administration educators, however, is that while
current students of public administration may learn much during their academic
experience, do they leave their programs as educated individuals, ready to become
dedicated and competent public servants in a world that is changing with extraor-
dinary rapidity? The reality is that, in many cases, we may be paying less attention
to the “education” of our next generation of public administrators than we are to
their “learning”. To clarify this point, it is useful to draw a distinction between
“learning” and “education”.
Learning is, for all intents and purposes, a highly individualized activity. The
typical student learns, in most cases, because they want to do so and they do
this in what essentially is a highly individualized way. Usually, what they learn is
directly applicable to perceived job requirements. While they may take classes,
often with many other students, their experience of learning in these classes is, in
almost all instances, a highly personal one. The typical student reads, listens and
absorbs information. Their efforts are almost always driven by their realization
that learning a body of information represents a significant step in their prepara-
tion for a professional career, and their work is motivated by that goal. In public
administration, students do, as we have noted above, learn a variety of different
things, including some subjects that are quite complex and sophisticated. Thus,
the student is provided with and, usually, acquires many of the skills needed to
succeed in his or her career. However, in today’s world, skills are not enough.
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Excellence in Public Administration Education: Preparing the Next Generation …
What is required is the analytic ability that comes not simply from learning, but
rather as a product of education.
Education, and the educating of the student, is a rather different matter than sim-
ply learning skills. The educated individual not only possesses knowledge of particular
administrative skills and techniques, and subject matter expertise, but is also someone
who understands the need to, and has some capacity to, recognize the many subtle-
ties of the social, political and environmental context within which his or her skills
must be applied. The educated person has the insight to appreciate the nuances of the
situation in which he or she is functioning. Such an individual has an understanding
of why things function as they do; why institutions work as they do; and even more
importantly, how to improve those processes and institutions with which they must
work. Most significantly, the educated individual understands how the institutions and
processes within which he or she must function interact with the values of the group
or groups with which they must deal, and with the society as a whole.
In truth, as one examines how students are prepared for governmental service,
all to often, it appears that a much greater degree of attention is given to the
processes of student learning, rather than to the educating of the student. Too
often public administration education is really more like the learning that is, quite
appropriately, at the heart of much training activity. It is skill focused and often
pays little or no attention to preparing the student to adapt to a world in which
required skills are rapidly changing. That this is so, is in many ways not surprising.
Learning, in the end, is highly individually based, while education requires a vibrant
community setting – indeed, a community of excellence. It is community based,
because it relies not so much on the individual’s own ability to learn, but rather
on the individual’s ability to interact with others in order to better understand the
subtleties of complex issues and problems and the nature of their interaction with
a changing world. Thus, to promote education in its broadest sense, it is necessary
to build a community in which education is not only valued and encouraged but,
most importantly, is experienced by those who are a part of that community.
It is for this reason that effective education requires the successful development
of real educational communities of excellence. Unfortunately, the creation of such
communities requires time, commitment, creativity and considerable investment
of human and financial resources. Moreover, in a very subtle way, the processes
of change going on in many parts of the world have tended to undermine the
development of such educational communities. Rather, they have tended to em-
phasize, sometimes in not so subtle ways, learning at the expense of education.
This is because in far too many places, one of the unintended consequences of the
triumph of democratic capitalism during the course of the past two decades has
been to place a much greater emphasis upon the development of the individual at
the expense of the community. When combined with the understandable desire
of those in transitional societies to acquire the skills of those in more developed
ones, we have seen the emergence of great emphasis upon learning, often at the
expense of real education.
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