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Home > NASPAA > About NASPAA > History
Early NASPAA history by Laurin L. Henry,
NASPAA President, 1971-72 Retired
Dean and Professor Emeritus Virginia Commonwealth University.
Scholar in Residence, Weldon Cooper Center for Public
Service, University of Virginia.
(A summary report from the NASPAA Historical Project,
prepared for NASPAA's 25th Anniversary Conference, Austin, TX, Oct. 18-21,
1995)
Introduction For almost a decade I have been studying NASPAA history. This has
been a part time retirement project, in a status somewhere between draftee and volunteer.
When the NASPAA leadership asked me to undertake it, my qualifications were two: First,
the recent death of NASPAA's first President, Robert Wilcox, had left me, if not the
eldest in years, at least the most senior living ex-President and supposedly a storehouse
of institutional memory. And second, my imminent official retirement was expected to leave
me with ample time. I accepted the responsibility, partly from a feeling of obligation to
see that the contributions of Wilcox and other founders of NASPAA were not forgotten, and
partly out of curiosity to review some of the events that I had been involved in and
perhaps understand them better than I had at the time. The initial assumptions about my
qualifications proved of limited validity. My own memory and meager file savings were
quite inadequate to tell the story and I have depended heavily on old file materials,
interviews, and comments on draft manuscript from other early NASPAA participants. whose
contributions are gratefully acknowledged. And little did I, or NASPAA, realize how much
time would pass, which is partly a fulfillment of Parkinson's Law, partly an indication of
the difficulty of working in Charlottesville from widely scattered sources, and partly a
result of my own frequent diversion to other professional and personal activities. I have been a volunteer in the sense that my compensation has been
mostly psychic. I have received encouragement from NASPAA officers and staff, access to
NASPAA files (very skimpy for most of this early period), and a little travel expense.
Very importantly. I have had shelter, office support, and occasional travel money from
what is now the Weldon Cooper Center at UVA; to the recent directors of that
organization--James "Dolph" Norton and Carl W. Stenberg--NASPAA and I owe a
large debt of gratitude. The tangible product so far is a manuscript of about 800 typed
pages. It begins with the background and formation in the late 1950s of NASPAA's
predecessor organization, the Council on Graduate Education for Public Administration
(CGEPA); describes the activities of that group and its transformation in 1970 into
NASPAA, with considerable attention to issues surrounding the latter event; and then, in
three long chapters, traces the history of NASPAA to around 1974-75. 1974 was a landmark
year, in which it could be said for the first time that the organization was securely
established, and in which NASPAA achieved its most important early objectives--namely,
securing substantial federal subsidy for graduate education for public service, and
adopting the first formal statement of standards for such education. I have to some extent
researched, and if my energy and support hold out may write, what I envisage as a final
chapter that will take the history to the early 1980s. At about that time NASPAA achieved
roughly the size, form, and status in which it still exists and decided to proceed from
enunciation of standards to implementing them in an accrediting process. The story beyond
that, including the task of evaluating the results of standards and accreditation, I will
gladly leave to a later historian. In this work I have wrestled with a problem that I suppose is common
to all history writing: the need to bound and place my subject in time and its relevant
environments. It seemed to me that a narrowly focused organizational history of NASPAA
would be of little interest, except maybe as an ego-massaging exercise for a few of us
old-timers. NASPAA might be an interesting study if it could be related to--and possibly
provide new perspective on--broader developments and issues, such as the evolving purpose
and content of public affairs and administration as a field of study; its place in higher
education, including questions about the structure and priorities of American
universities; and the context of public events and relevant public policies, especially
those pertaining to education and training for the public service. As the 800 pages
attest, my net was cast broadly. As to the time span, I chose to begin with a fairly complete study
of CGEPA for several reasons. Describing the origins and activity of that entity provided
a framework for summarizing the background and status of public administration in the
1950s and 1960s. CGEPA's objectives and activities flowed in an unbroken stream into
NASPAA, so that a considerable amount of background-filling was necessary in any case.
And, besides, it was apparent to me that the written and human resources for that
particular chapter of the annals of public administration were dwindling rapidly, and if
it were not written by me, now, it never would be. (The deaths in the meantime of such key
figures as Stephen Sweeney, Henry Reining, and most recently Don Price, emphasize the
point.) NASPAA is a symbol, spokesperson, and useful instrument of
collective purposes, but it has been important to keep in mind that the organization is
not the field itself. The reality of public administration education is out there on
several hundred campuses. When the entire history is understood, perhaps it can be
concluded that collective endeavors through NASPAA have had significant effects on the
amount, status, form, and content of public affairs education, but it has seemed to me
that in the early period NASPAA was mostly a reflection of the problems and concerns and
aspirations of deans and program directors, as they struggled to advance their field under
the circumstances of the time and within the institutional framework of U.S. universities.
In the period I have studied, NASPAA appears more as a dependent variable, an agency
reacting to changes in its environment, than as an independent force inflicting changes on
that environment. I have been unable to give much attention to the histories of individual
university programs, although a study of at least a representative sample of such programs
would be a logical precursor, or at least a very useful complement, to a history of
NASPAA. The best I could do was to track the trends in purpose, size, content, and status
of those programs as they were registered in NASPAA. I have particularly tried to show how
the leaders of those programs sought to use NASPAA to help them seize opportunities
stemming from explosive growth and expanding resources of higher education in the 1960s
and 1970s, all within the deeply limits imposed by the typical organization structures and
embedded values of U.S. universities. The aspiration to professionalism has been an important motivator of
collective action through NASPAA. It has stimulated related questions about how the
university programs and their agent, NASPAA, should relate to the profession at large,
including such representative institutions as the American Society for Public
Administration (ASPA), the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), and the
International City Management Association (ICMA). The activities of NASPAA and its constituent university programs,
and their environment in higher education, in turn were set in a dynamic context of
changing American society, politics, public events, and public policies. The era studied
stretched from post-World War 11 through Watergate. It was marked by persistent Cold War
and the crises of Korea and Vietnam; political regimes symbolized by the likeable Ike, the
New Frontier, the Great Society, Nixon and Watergate, and the fall-out from Watergate,
such as congressional and Democratic party reassertiveness while Ford struggled to restore
stability and civility. The period experienced explosive economic and population growth;
suburbanization and urban crises; demands for civil rights and equal opportunity; marches
in the streets and demonstrations on the campuses; energy crises and episodes of recession
and inflation. The public environment was, to put it mildly, superheated, with profound
effects on the attitudes of university leaders, faculty members, and students; not least
of these was a heightened appreciation of the importance of politics and public service.
The combination of large public events and continuous growth of public services,
especially at state and local levels, stimulated growth of public affairs education.
Political changes also impacted more immediately pertinent government policies about
public service education and training, sometimes favorably to NASPAA members, sometimes
not. Much of NASPAA's history through the mid-1970s is a story of efforts to steer the
cause of public service education through the unstable seas of national politics, and the
slower changing currents of attitude and policy in such agencies as the Office of
Education, the Civil Service Commission, and the Office of Management and Budget. Getting Organized
The immediate challenge to NASPAA's first President and Executive
Council, elected in 1970, was to get the organization running in a very fundamental sense:
get an accurate membership list, establish a system for mailing out information, fix staff
responsibilities, bill members for dues, establish accounts, make a budget. Beyond that it
was essential to establish a few basic policies, appoint the committees required by the
by-laws, and start planning for the first annual conference. All this was elementary but
not easy. The President, Bob Wilcox, was based in San Diego and could not get to
Washington often. ASPA headquarters, which was supposed to provide secretariat services,
was in disarray, with the executive director position in transition and a severe shortage
of staff and funds to hire them. In this emergency NASPAA turned to Donald C. Stone of the
University of Pittsburgh, CGEPA's last Chairman and the principal architect of the
reorganization into NASPAA; he had just retired from his deanship and had a sabbatical
coming. Wilcox designated Stone Program Coordinator, and he moved into headquarters for
several months in 1970 to oversee the start-up and provide a NASPAA presence in
Washington. After the Wilcox-Stone regime, I, as second President and then Executive
Council member and informal finance chairman, gave high priority to organizational and
staffing matters. By 1973, with ASPA in better shape and some new staff recruited, the
basic operations were pretty well in hand. Growth of NASPAA and the Field
The most obvious fact about NASPAA in its first decade was growth.
NASPAA was founded in April 1970 at Princeton, when CGEPA adopted a new name and by-laws
changing itself into NASPAA. Like the predecessor, NASPAA was an association of
institutions, member university schools and other program entities, that named
institutional representatives--deans and program directors--who constituted the pool of
people from which NASPAA elected officers and staffed committees. Exactly who was a member
of CGEPA had always been a little vague, but during its lifetime the number of
participating universities had roughly doubled, so that about 65 institutional
representatives were present and voting at Princeton. The first NASPAA Executive Council
talked a good deal about need for a recruiting campaign, but that never really got
organized except for printing a primitive brochure; that and publicity through PAR and
other publications did the job, and inquiries began to come in. Rapid growth ensued, so
that by 1975 NASPAA had just over 150 university members, and would have over 200 by 1980.
Like CGEPA, NASPAA was founded as a satellite of ASPA, with self
governing features approved by the ASPA national Council and subject, at least
theoretically, to ultimate governance by that body--a power that in fact was never
exercised. More practically, NASPAA was part of ASPA for legal, fiscal, and administrative
purposes; the Executive Director of ASPA was responsible for NASPAA funds, and support to
NASPAA was initially an additional duty of various ASPA staff members. With an expanding
base of membership and programs, NASPAA quickly developed both need for and capacity to
support more staff. The way to self-sufficiency was eased initially by overhead and
administrative spill-over from foundation and federal grants. 1974 was a turning point
when NASPAA became able to support from its own budget a full-time staff director and his
secretary, plus project staff supported by grants. With growing programmatic autonomy and
financial capacity, NASPAA was on the way to organizational separation from
ASPA, which occurred in a series of stages ending in 1977. NASPAA's growth and increasing self-sufficiency may have owed
something to capable management by a succession of leaders--Presidents, Executive Council
members, committee chairs, and executive staff--but it would have taken a remarkable
incapacity to fail, in view of underlying growth of it potential clientele. As of 1959-60,
a survey showed about 100 institutions offering some kind of graduate instruction in
public administration, but the bulk of these were small programs, organizationally and
programmatically undifferentiated from political science departments. The estimated
national enrollment of 3,000 graduate students was heavily concentrated in a dozen or so
large programs, most of which had achieved separate organizational status as departments
or schools. A survey by CGEPA in 1966-67, which got returns from the larger programs but
did not hear from all of the small fry, showed about 4,500 students, two-thirds of which
were part-time, and a degree production of 670 master's and 70 doctorates more or less in
public administration. The first survey by NASPAA, in 1970-71, with returns from 125
programs, reported enrollment of 7,877 at the master's and 829 at the doctoral level, with
2130 masters and 91 doctorates awarded that year. By 1974-75 there were 138 reporting
programs, 19,731 master's students (no separate report on doctoral students that year),
and 4,586 master's and 1-21 doctorates awarded. Between 1966-67 and 1974-75, the number of
independent professional schools of public affairs or administration increased from 13 to
29, combined schools of business and public administration from 9 to 24, separately
organized public administration departments and degree-granting institutes from 8 to 35,
and academic departments offering either a public administration degree or a designated
specialization from 25 to 52. By the latter time virtually all of the separately organized
schools and departments offered the preferred professional MPA degree. In the 1974 survey,
the part-time master's candidates remained in the majority by a margin of 12,288 over
7,443 full-timers. In this period, enrollments of women and minority students also grew
geometrically so that by 1974-75, of the roughly 20,000 graduate students, just over 3,000
were minority and a little under 4,000 were women. A pronounced--and to some,
worrisome--feature of the period was the rapid growth of enrollment in off-campus degree
programs, some offered at sites far distant from the parent university. A principal goal of the founders, of course, was that NASPAA would
encourage and facilitate growth--that it would somehow influence universities to offer
more and better and larger programs and encourage more students to enroll in them. It may
be that by the middle 1970s NASPAA had become something of a reference point for
institutions contemplating new or improved ventures in public affairs education, but that
is hard to prove. For the most part, I think, the forces propelling growth in public
service education were already out there in the public affairs and higher education
environments, and NASPAA rode the wave. One instructive way to look at NASPAA's history is to examine the
way it sought to define itself: how it chose and sustained a basic constituency and set of
allies. That process displayed alternating and sometimes conflicting impulses of openness
and inclusiveness on the one hand, and exclusiveness, discrimination, or differentiation
on the other. Constitutional Debates
and Decisions
The Princeton conference passed the resolution creating NASPAA only
after contentious debate on issues of inclusiveness and equality versus exclusiveness and
differentiation. CGEPA had declared a broad purpose to advance education for public
service but in reality it welcomed any university representative--either self-selected or
formally designated --who wanted to talk public administration, for any purpose and from
any kind of organizational base. Its constituency consisted of deans and directors of
graduate programs. The latter category was a diverse lot, ranging from clearly designated
heads of specialized entities like departments and institutes to senior public
administration faculty in academic departments where a separate public administration
"program" was hard to detect. Leadership in CGEPA had gravitated to the larger
programs, several of which had achieved the status of separate schools and increasingly
referred to themselves as "comprehensive professional schools" (or sometimes
"multidisciplinary professional schools"). The rank and file tended to be from
the smaller programs, many of them on weak organizational bases such as ad hoc
interdepartmental committees or informal faculty sponsors within political science
departments. In the latter, the commitment to professional education tended to be faint or
non-existent; many of them still offered the M.A. in political science with some amount of
public administration specialization, rather than the ostensibly professional MPA degree. For most of its history, CGEPA was a pretty informal get-together of
senior university public administrationists, meeting a couple of days annually just before
or after the ASPA national conferences. Its founders, Lloyd Short of the University of
Minnesota and Stephen Sweeney of the University of Pennsylvania said the main purpose was
to "talk shop" among those with program leadership responsibilities; persons not
invited often referred to it as "the deans' club." Later efforts under its
banner to advance the field, such as by seeking major foundation or federal aid to public
service education, had not produced much even in the benign climate of the Great Society.
In 1969, with the drive for federal aid stalled by the Nixon administration, a few CGEPA
leaders decided to try for a stronger organization, one that might be a more effective
advocate and establish standards for the field; indeed, it was understood that the latter
objective might be a prerequisite of the former. Prime movers included the current CGEPA
Chairman, Stone, of Pittsburgh; past Chairmen Henry Reining, Jr., of the University of
Southern California and Brewster C. Denny of the University of Washington; and one of the
"younger men," Chairman-elect Robert F. Wilcox of San Diego State College (later
University). These leaders developed and brought to the Princeton conference
proposals for revamping CGEPA that included the new name, NASPAA, and a set of by-laws
that would have constituted a strong act of definition and differentiation. It was
proposed to incorporate in the by-laws a requirement for membership eligibility of a
declared purpose of professional education and a curriculum appropriate to that aim
(although content and degree requirements were left unspecified). More importantly, the
draft by-laws set forth objective criteria by which members were to be classified; these
included a defined administrative entity with a single administrative head, an
identifiable responsible faculty, minimum numbers of faculty and students, and appropriate
dedicated resources. Programs meeting these requirements (there may have been as many as
twenty at the time) were to constitute an inner circle of Sustaining Members; programs
meeting some of the standards and committed to meeting all of them could be enrolled as
Provisional Sustaining Members for a limited period of time; all others, including small
graduate programs and miscellaneous non-teaching entities would be just Members. Although
all members were to have just one vote in annual meetings, dominance of the Sustaining
members was assured by provisions reserving the Presidency and a majority of the Executive
Council for them, by giving the Executive Council strict control of the agenda at annual
meetings, and by requiring that by-laws amendments and any resolutions affecting standards
for Sustaining Members must be passed by majorities that included a majority of the
Sustaining Members. The proposed by-laws were strongly opposed by the small programs
that could not qualify for the inner circle and were determined to head off what they
interpreted as a constitutional coup by the large programs. The small programs were aided
by spokesmen from a few of the larger and most reputed institutions, such as Princeton and
Syracuse, who were leery of standards that seemed unduly mechanistic and unconnected with
academic quality as traditionally understood. Stone and his associates had, indeed,
developed an ingenious strategy for bootstrapping CGEPA into something quite different,
but they had neglected to count the votes, and the objectors prevailed by a large margin.
Before the new by-laws were approved the detailed criteria were set aside, all references
to classes of membership eliminated and all provisions to enhance the dominance of the
comprehensive schools stricken. One member institution, one vote, all on an equal basis.
In constitutional form, NASPAA would be little different from CGEPA. NASPAA's founding act, then, was one of inclusion, or at least of
non-exclusion. All CGEPA members were grandfathered in, and new applicants were asked only
to declare a purpose of professional education--a requirement that might possibly have
deterred a few academic public administrationists uninterested in professionalism, but
that line had been pretty well drawn by self selection by the end of the CGEPA period. In
the first year of the new organization, Stone, on the Executive Council, fought a
rear-guard action on admission decisions, insisting that NASPAA membership ought to mean
something in the new way of program respectability. He sought to relegate what he called
the "non-programs" to a separate category, consisting of obviously weak graduate
programs along with the non-credit training centers and other miscellaneous entities. He
was easily overcome, and the Executive Council delegated its responsibility for
scrutinizing membership applications to the staff, which was soon admitting an institution
producing the membership fee (which, by the way, was scaled to the number of enrollments
in the program, enhancing the comfort of the small programs). The initial by-laws left
hanging the question of admissibility of undergraduate programs, subject to recommendation
of a task force to be appointed, but by the second year they were in, too, if they could
show a definite professional orientation. Another early by-laws amendment made a place for
government and other non-university centers, such as the Federal Executive Institute. Although the levellers had prevailed, a legacy of the Princeton
conference was several years of suspicion among the small programs about what the
leadership, still mostly by the large programs, was really up to; and Stone and others
sometimes claimed to feel constrained by a multitude of pygmies. These tensions had to be
abated before NASPAA could effectively deal with standards, which I will discuss in a
later section. Despite their discriminatory impulses about some things, the
initiators of NASPAA got one thing into the new by-laws that was certainly
inclusionary,
to say the least. This was the way the by-laws defined the scope of the new organization's
interests and potential membership. For this purpose, "public affairs and
administration" included but was not limited to programs in "... such fields as public administration, public policy
analysis and administration; urban planning, urban studies, or urban affairs; rural
community planning and development; international affairs; environmental planning,
control, or studies; law enforcement, criminal justice, correctional or judicial
administration; public works administration; public health planning and administration;
and community development. " This definition was based on a vague hope that NASPAA would
transcend the intellectual and institutional origins of its founders and become a grand
coalition of forces in public affairs education broadly defined. Such an aggregation might
have very large influence in government and higher education. A provision for Sections of
NASPAA was put in the bylaws to provide homes for the various special interests. The dream
of a large federation quickly evaporated, however, when it was discovered that academics
in most of the fields referred to already had specialized associations of their own and no
interest in tying themselves to the public administrationists or submerging their
identities in NASPAA. Flirtations with such associations in city planning and urban
studies did go on for a couple of years, but the ubiquitous processes of academic and
professional differentiation had gone too far to be overcome by anything NASPAA had to
offer. Even within the ASPA family and the field of public administration
as usually understood, two university-based ASPA affiliates, with functions well within
NASPAA's proclaimed sphere, resisted being folded into NASPAA. The Conference of
Universities in Governmental Research (CUGR) and the Conference on Continuing Education
and Training in Public Administration (CCETPA), although always weak sisters, continued to
receive support for several years by research and training interests who feared that
NASPAA would always be dominated by the graduate teaching programs and give little
attention to anything else. CUGR and CCETPA never formally affiliated but gradually faded
away in the later Seventies, as NASPAA absorbed most of their constituents and functions. Although no conscious decisions or announcements marked a scaling
down of ambitions, within two or three years it was evident that the NASPAA core
constituency would be the graduate degree programs in public administration and public
affairs, both the more or less traditional ones and those that were in process of
redefining themselves as "public policy" programs. After a period of wavering,
the latter group decided to stay with NASPAA, although with allegiance divided between it
and the new Association for Public Policy and Management (APPAM) that offered individual
memberships to their entire faculties. It also became clear that despite the presence in
NASPAA of considerable numbers of representatives of non-degree training and research
centers, the preponderance of leadership and influence in NASPAA would remain with the
graduate degree programs. The effect of these developments, combined with the leveling off
of growth in higher education and the founding of new programs that occurred in the later
1970s, was to limit NASPAA's constituency to the 200 to 300 programs that have now
supported it for many years. We can only speculate about both the power-enhancing effects
and the tensions and dilution of interests that might have occurred if the core of public
administration and affairs programs had to share influence in the sort of public affairs
grand coalition originally envisaged. Could such an organization have become an
accrediting agency? As an organization dedicated to professional education, NASPAA was
committed by its by-laws to cooperation with other professional organizations and groups.
This proved hard to implement, as the impulse to cooperation and unity was often
contradicted by NASPAA's striving for autonomy and self-determination. The most obvious problem of professional relationships involved
relations with NASPAA's parent organization, ASPA. CGEPA had started as a coalescing
within ASPA of school men who felt mutual interests not shared by the general run of ASPA
members. NASPAA continued as an ASPA satellite--not even an issue at Princeton. In the
beginning, NASPAA was totally dependent on ASPA for administrative services; 40% of its
dues income was pledged to ASPA to buy ASPA agency affiliate memberships for its
university constituents and to compensate ASPA for administrative overhead. The ASPA
Council made no particular effort to control NASPAA's program, and the Executive Director
did what he could to support it, but ASPA in the early Seventies was in a period of
financial stress and found it difficult to provide the services that the increasingly
restless NASPAA leadership wanted. As NASPAA grew and become more able to finance staff
services from its own budget, its leaders insisted on direct supervisory relations with
the ASPA staff members assigned to its affairs, despite the Executive Director's overall
responsibility. Also, fearing loss of its funds in an ASPA financial debacle, NASPAA
insisted that its money be segregated in separate bank accounts, so that it could not be
drawn on in ASPA's periodic cash flow crises. A milestone was reached in 1973-74 when
NASPAA while continuing to make base payments from its account for general headquarters
support, was able to finance a full-time staff director and his secretary from its own
budget. The first generation of NASPAA leaders, most of whose connections
went back into the CGEPA period, felt simultaneous loyalties to ASPA and were inclined to
stick with the parent in all but the direst extremity. But around 1974 there emerged a new
generation with a different outlook. In 1975 they began a process of organizational
separation that took some time to complete because of the difficulties of sorting out and
setting up an independent secretariat, and because ASPA, as the only incorporated entity,
was the legal custodian of NASPAA funds. In 1977, NASPAA moved into separate offices
(although adjacent to ASPA), became incorporated in its own right, and marked its maturity
by hiring a well-known senior administrator, Joseph Robertson, as Executive Director. That
year also, resolving a question that had arisen several times before, NASPAA abandoned the
practice of hitch-hiking on ASPA annual meetings and began its completely separate
meetings at a different time of year. The separation from ASPA seemed to make no immediate
difference in what NASPAA could do, programmatically. It seems to have been motivated in
part by anticipation of eventual financial advantage, but more basically by an
unarticulated desire for autonomy, a feeling that the future should be totally
unconstrained by other attachments. The NASPAA by-laws also proposed cooperation with other professional
groups, and in the early years considerable effort went into cultivating relations with
organizations beyond ASPA in the public administration and governmental communities. For
example, both before and after his tenure as NASPAA's third President, Bill Collins of the
University of Georgia (and later American University) spent many hours with the director
of ICMA, Mark Keane, who was especially interested in the schools. Mutual interests in the
quality of education, internships, and student placement produced cross-attendance at
conferences and assurances of good will and support, even some inter-organization
committees, but it was difficult, at first, to pin down these relations in doable projects
with specific objectives. >Relationships with other professional organizations became more
focused and productive around 1973-74 and continued so for several years, as those groups
became interested and made critical contributions to NASPAA's prime objectives, standards
and federal aid. in 1973, a report by NAPA highly critical of the vague purposes and
haphazard diversity of the schools' programs was taken by NASPAA leaders as reflecting
serious concerns in the profession at large and strengthened their own sense that it was
time for a direct approach to standards. In the ensuing work of the Committee on
Standards, strenuous efforts were made to get outside professional opinion about the need
for and content of standards. While it is difficult to discern specific contributions to
what finally emerged, the effort got the attention of the professional community and
brought expressions of enthusiasm that in turn encouraged the NASPAA membership to accept
the standards proposed by the Committee the following year. Meanwhile, NAPA had rallied
ASPA, ICMA, and several other organizations, including NASPAA, to a conference that
produced something called the Belmont Agreement. The parties pledged themselves
collectively to improving public service education and individually to various specific
projects. NASPAA's share, of course, was to enunciate and implement program standards. on
the strength of this show of inter-organization collaboration, the Department of Housing
and Urban Development was persuaded to make several grants to help implement the Belmont
Agreement, some of which came to NASPAA, both directly and indirectly. NASPAA's push in
the later 1970s to apply the standards owed at least something to the Belmont process. Almost simultaneous with the inter-organization effort on standards
and other educational improvement, NASPAA was collaborating with the same community in an
effort to secure funding of federal grants to the public affairs schools under Title IX of
the Higher Education Act, which had been passed in 1968 but never funded because of
opposition by the Nixon administration. In 1974, with Nixon on the skids, ASPA took the
lead in a governmental relations program to persuade Congress to appropriate funds. NASPAA
leaders joined enthusiastically as prospects improved. Particularly effective lobbyists
were former ASPA Executive Director Don L. Bowen, now representative in NASPAA of the
University of Arizona, Brewster Denny of the University of Washington, and the NASPAA
1974-75 President, Tom Murphy of the University of Maryland. These and others not only
roused the NASPAA constituency to approach key legislators but effectively enlisted other
professional organizations in stirring grass-roots support. At its peak, this campaign
transcended the public administration/governmental groups to bring in support from several
of the general higher education organizations at Dupont Circle. The outcome was a
veto-proof appropriation of $4 million for fellowship awards and institutional program
grants, most of which went to NASPAA schools. We will discuss this subject further, below.
It seems ironic that at the same time that NASPAA was asserting its
independence, separating itself from ASPA, its objectives were being advanced, more
effectively than ever before, by support from ASPA and other professional groups. The
impulse to organizational independence did not, for the time being, impede programmatic
cooperation. Although my investigations are incomplete beyond the period described, it is
my impression that NASPAA's collaboration with other professional bodies peaked in the
middle and late Seventies and has been of less importance in more recent years--a natural
concomitant of a shift in programmatic emphasis that will be discussed later. Under the heading of professional relations and differentiation
should be mentioned another NASPAA concern of the 1970s, which was to assure that public
affairs education would remain separate and distinct from education for business
administration. At that time, business education had far outstripped public administration
in growth and influence on most campuses. The idea of "generic" schools of
administration was the most extreme manifestation of a popular view that business and
public administration were very nearly the same thing. On several campuses, public
administration graduate programs were being organized in, or reorganized into, combined
professional schools, where they almost invariably became the junior partners.
Particularly threatening to the public administration programs in such situations was a
strong movement for accreditation of business schools through the American Association of
Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). A number of leading business school deans proposed
that AACSB standards and accreditation reviews include the public administration programs
in the combined schools; some even suggested that AACSB offer accreditation to any program
of management for any purpose, regardless of degree title or organizational setting.
Public administrationists, particularly those connected with business schools, feared loss
of autonomy and being forced into a mold that would suppress the "publicness" of
their instruction. >In 1971, through friendly intervention by Comptroller General Elmer
Staats and his associates at the General Accounting office, who had close relations with
the business schools, NASPAA was able to embrace AACSB in a joint committee to discuss
mutual interests and differences. A series of meetings over several years opened up those
subjects and identified several joint projects, none of which ever materialized. However,
NASPAA met its fundamental objectives which was to show the flag and insist on the
distinctiveness of public administration education. Eventually the most aggressive
business deans backed off, and so far as I know, no program offering a distinct public
administration or public affairs degree--even if under the organizational umbrella of a
business school--was ever reviewed for accreditation by AACSB. Dealing with AACSB had another result. For some NASPAA leaders,
becoming familiar with AACSB's operations including its accreditation activity, brought
comfort with the idea of accreditation, which had been almost a forbidden subject in
NASPAA until that time. There grew an understanding that, whatever else might be said
about it, accreditation might be the ultimate guarantee of autonomy for public affairs
education. Alternative Program
Strategies
Another way to look at the history of NASPAA is in terms of issues
and decisions about program strategies or priorities. Among all the things that NASPAA
might do, what activities would most effectively consolidate and built the organization
and make the greatest contribution to public service education? With a little forcing, we
can interpret the experience within two alternative strategies: (1) Securing and
delivering services and benefits to members, and (2) Enunciating and applying standards
for public administration and affairs programs. As preliminary, it should be noted that
interest in standards did not develop until fairly late in the CGEPA period, and after the
Princeton experience the NASPAA leadership chose to downplay the subject, while
concentrating on getting organized and continuing the pursuit of member benefits that had
preoccupied CGEPA. During the 1960s, CGEPA had some modest successes in securing aid
and benefits to public administration education from the federal government. At the urging
of ASPA and CGEPA, the Office of Education undertook a national survey of graduate
education for public administration that resulted in an important report in 1961--usually
known as the Ward Stewart report. Discussions with the friendly Civil Service Commission
Chairman, John W. Macy, Jr., led to the jointly managed Public Administration Fellows
program, which from 1968 through the '70s brought a dozen or more faculty members to
Washington each year for an extended dose of bureaucratic experience. The peak of CGEPA
influence was its encouragement to the Johnson administration to propose, and Congress to
pass, Title IX of the Higher Education Act of 1968, which authorized university grants for
program support and fellowships for graduate education for public service. In drafting
guidelines for the operation of this program, the Office of Education swallowed almost
whole the advice of NASPAA leaders. However, before the program became operational, the
incoming Nixon administration scratched the first budget request, and Congress went along.
Intense lobbying by Stone and others in 1969 and 1970 failed to get the appropriation
restored, and by 1971, although NASPAA continued to pass resolutions on the subject, Title
IX had begun to look like pie-in-the-sky. While the government was unforthcoming, an unexpected event in a
different quarter sustained the hope that NASPAA might prosper by securing and dispensing
benefits to members. Late in 1970, an approach that had been made to the Ford Foundation
far back in the CGEPA period resulted in a sudden decision by Ford to award NASPAA (or,
rather, ASPA on NASPAA's behalf) $1 million for a three-year program of graduate
fellowships for minority students in urban administration. Arranging a process for
awarding and monitoring these fellowships, almost all of which went to NASPAA schools,
became a major activity for several years; it was an especial concern of the first
President, Wilcox. Later, the initial award was supplemented by a follow-up from Ford, and
by a related award from the Office of Economic Opportunity for health administration
fellowships. Altogether, from 1971 through 1976, about 200 minority master's students were
supported by awards from NASPAA. These programs, of course, brought NASPAA prominence,
gave it benefits to dispense that were highly prized by members and potential members, and
associated it with an eminent sponsor and a politically important cause. These grants also
brought incidental administrative and overhead funds that contributed significantly to
getting the infant NASPAA on its feet. Welcome as they were, it might be noted that these awards to NASPAA
were limited in scope and duration, considerably less than what had been hoped for from
foundation sources. Back in the Sixties, when Ford and the other major foundations had
seemed an almost unlimited potential source of blessings, some of the CGEPA leaders had
allowed themselves to think that the foundations could be persuaded to support and
underwrite the transformation of public service education in a large-scale way. But a
probe in that direction, the John Honey study of 1966, financed by the Carnegie
Corporation, had produced a report that emphasized the gap between potential and reality
in most of the schools and did not encourage major foundation investments. There was new
hope in 1970 that the NASPAA organization could pry open the spigots, and to some extent
it did. But the minority fellowship awards marked the limits of foundation support in the
future, the foundations would make a few substantial awards to individual schools, and
would on occasion make small grants to NASPAA for very limited purposes, but they, would
not make general support grants to NASPAA or attempt a broad underwriting of the whole
field. For a while in NASPAA's early years, as hope for direct federal
subsidy of public service education through Title IX became fainter, a few NASPAA leaders
(myself included) entertained the idea of an alternative governmental relations strategy.
This was the notion that the public affairs schools might become major participants in
training and executive development, especially that financed by the federal government.
Under the right arrangements, such activities would enhance relations with government
agencies in numerous mutually beneficial ways and become an important new source of
students and revenue for the schools. The idea was not entirely unfounded. The federal government at that
time was rapidly expanding expenditures for executive development, some of which were
going to universities. In 1970, the Civil Service Commission had picked up the program
started earlier under the National Institute of Public Affairs, under which about 75
mid-career feds nominated by various agencies annually received a year of graduate public
affairs education at one of eight specially arranged university programs. At the same
time, individual agencies were sending perhaps as many more employees to graduate school
under their own direct sponsorship. Congress had just passed the Intergovernmental
Personnel Act (IPA) authorizing grants to states and localities for training, in which
universities might participate. IPA had other provisions of interest to universities, such
as authorization of federal cost-sharing for graduate fellowships for state and local
employees, and the so-called "mobility" program under which federal agencies
could loan or exchange executives with universities on the same terms as with state and
local government. NASPAA engaged the CSC and other federal agencies in conversations
about expanded university participation in all this, but although the exchanges were
friendly, relatively little happened as a result. Federal patronage of universities
perhaps expanded slightly in the 1970s, but not in any path-breaking ways, and by the '80s
was shrinking back to a lower level than before. The old NIPA program, now called
Education for Public Management, was an ideal arrangement from the university point of
view, and many institutions hoped to get in on such a thing, but the CSC gradually lost
interest and abandoned it in the late '70s; with the example of the government-wide
coordinated program gone, the individual agencies lost interest in their
direct-sponsorship programs as well. We can see now something not understood at the time,
which was the depth of federal commitment to an in-house approach to executive
development, using such institutions as the Executive Development Centers and the Federal
Executive Institute, which had been started back in the '60s. Both the CSC and the several
federal agencies found these enterprises more convenient, controllable, and comfortable to
use than sending people to universities, either for regular graduate study or specially
contracted programs. The IPA, too, proved a mild disappointment to academia.
Appropriations lower than expected meant that the money filtered down through the states
was not enough to bring universities into state and local training in a large way.
Fellowships for state and local employees never amounted to anything because those levels
would or could not put up the required local match; and the mobility provisions, although
occasionally useful, added little to what the universities already enjoyed under the
Public Administration Fellows program. Studying this history, I have mused over the question of whether I
and others were guilty of a major failure of leadership back around 1971-72. Could a more
vigorous representation through NASPAA have changed the course of events and led to a real
government-university partnership in training? My tentative conclusion is that while a
stronger effort might have made clearer what was going on, it probably could not have
changed things significantly. Key people in the federal government felt vague good will
toward the universities but were not highly respectful of most of the public
administration programs; judged by their own claims to professionalism, most of the
schools fell short in too many ways. The universities as institutions were not
indispensable for training, since the government could hire all the professors it needed
for $100 a day to lecture in its own programs. Besides, the bureaucratic interests and
incentives were all to support the federal institutions. Even if the government had been prepared to open up, how would the
universities have responded? Although most of the schools might engage in training from
time to time--or allow their faculties to moonlight in government-sponsored programs--the
bulk of the NASPAA constituency was seriously interested in executive development only if
it could be packaged in graduate courses and degrees. They were not prepared for the sort
of radical changes in curriculum and scheduling that would have been required to meet
large-scale government needs; indeed, some would have thought it betrayal of academic
values to do so. Whatever their personal preferences might have been, most of the program
directors were restrained by the typical university structure and culture that separates
adult education, continuing education, and "all that public service stuff" from
the "real" business of the institution and lowers the status of such activity in
numerous ways. What the NASPAA programs really wanted from government was direct subsidy,
largely on their own terms, as in Title IX, and they could not really focus on anything
else. And, finally, Title IX came through. Unlucky in timing and often
clumsy or feeble in representation until then, the ASPA-NASPAA coalition in 1974 took
advantage of the collapse of the Nixon administration, mobilized its friends, and
convinced enough waverers in Congress to get several million dollars into the
F.Y. 1976
appropriation act. Then, in an anti-climax, the appropriation was successfully defended
against the Ford administration's tryout of the rescission process under the new
Congressional Budget Act. With NASPAA's firm imprint on the program guidelines, most of
the funds went to member institutions. Beginning in 1975, as NASPAA's minority fellowship
programs phased out, the organization could claim responsibility for new and even more
widely distributed benefits to its constituency. The peak of NASPAA's governmental
influence came a couple of years later when one of the first acts of ex-NASPAA President
Alan "Scotty" Campbell, upon becoming CSC Chairman in the Carter administration,
was to establish the Presidential Management Internship program. Title IX and PMIP
provided important benefits to the public affairs and administration schools until the
early '80s. Decline of such benefits in the Reagan era may have been inevitable, but how
vigorously did NASPAA resist the trend? Did the schools need the benefits any less than
they had in the '70s? It appears that by then the NASPAA priorities had shifted to other
things. Satisfying as the federal largesse of the '70s was, it was in a
relationship that fell far short of the aspirations of some of the early CGEPA and NASPAA
leaders. Such people as Stone had hoped that NASPAA might be an agency for achieving the
intimate relationship with the government that the public administration profession had
long sought. In that vision, the central agencies of government would understand that
public administration was different from other professions and fields of study because it
was dedicated to the government's central and essential purposes. In its own interest, the
government should embrace the public administration schools, accord them special access
and generous support, not as categorical aid to education but as a matter of maintaining
and nurturing the capacity to govern. Stone argued on occasion that if it was in the
public interest to support large federal-state-university complexes in such fields as
agriculture, medicine, and physical science, then a field essential to the government's
prime responsibilities deserved no less in the way of support. Stated in an extreme
form--as Stone was wont to do from time to time--the proposition seemed quixotic to
government decision-makers, and to many in academia as well. Public administration
education remains in a mendicant relationship with government, treated as one among many
interests to be subsidized. On occasion, according to the degree of political power
mobilized, but generally constrained and balanced with other interests and kept at a
suitable distance. Should inability to overcome this perception be counted a failure of
NASPAA? Standards and Their Application
As NASPAA's services and benefits strategy reached its zenith of
productiveness in the middle 1970s, the alternative of a standards strategy had begun to
emerge. By the end of the decade, standards and their application were the organization's
central concern. As previously noted, the first three NASPAA Presidents and their
Executive Councils handled the subject of standards very gingerly, sensitive to the great
diversity among member programs and the potential divisiveness of the subject. A Committee
on Standards prescribed by the by-laws existed but was not encouraged to do much. In fact,
a leadership-sponsored by-laws amendment passed at the first annual conference, at Boulder
in April 1971, eliminated the original requirement that the Committee produce a statement
of standards for public service education. The predominant sentiment was for an approach
to standards involving limited inquiries into particular problems of the field, rather
than the development of comprehensive criteria by which member programs might be examined,
classified, or judged. There was some nervousness about a project undertaken by Stone to
see what could be salvaged from the statement of standards that had been set aside at
Princeton, but on the advice of colleagues, Stone reshaped the document in a way that made
it less inflammatory. "The Response of Higher Education to the Needs of the Public
Service" was published by NASPAA in 1971 but presented as a "working paper"
not an official organizational statement. The paper mentioned some of the criteria about
program size and organizational status that had been controversial--what Stone called the
"requisites" of an adequate university effort--but they were presented as
advocacy aimed at government and university top decision makers and resource allocators
rather than as proposals for internal application in NASPAA, and the prevailing peace was
not broken. By 1973 the climate was changing. Post-Princeton suspicions had
receded and the organization was in a state of cohesion permitting discussion of touchy
subjects. Some members of the Executive Council dared to suggest that the previously
celebrated diversity of member programs might be a problem for the field. Proliferation of
off-campus program networks suspected of low standards disturbed many constituents.
President-elect Clyde Wingfield of Baruch College, CUNY, called for an inquiry into what
he called "the state of the art" of public service education. Impulses to
venture forth were reinforced by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA)
report mentioned earlier that found unwarranted diversity, undefined purposes, unfocused
curricula, and a generally inadequate professionalism among the schools. With Wingfield
now in the lead, the Executive Council steered through the 1973 annual meeting at San
Diego a cautious resolution asking the Standards Committee to gather "information
necessary to enable the Association to work toward the development of guidelines for
academic programs." A few back-benchers detected the specter of accreditation, but
they were discounted by the leadership who emphasized how preliminary and tentative this
was: what could be the harm in looking at information toward possible guidelines? A reconstituted Standards Committee with Frank Sherwood, recently at
the Federal Executive Institute and now back at Southern California, as chairman, and
Ernest Engelbert, on leave from UCLA, as member, staff, and gadfly, stirred a whirlwind of
activity in 1973-74. The Committee quickly decided to go beyond its formal mandate and
produce a complete statement of "guidelines and standards" for professional
master's degree programs. The decision to focus on degrees of a specified kind and level
was both politically strategic in the short run and permanently determinative for NASPAA's
future work on standards. It avoided consideration of the overall adequacy of institutions
--departments, schools, and the like--that had been the thrust of Stone's work and was,
indeed, the general approach taken by AACSB in its accreditation. Early on, the Committee
also decided on an approach that would avoid the previous objections that statements of
standards were too mechanistic and unconnected with purpose or quality. Engelbert proposed
to start by developing what he called a "matrix of competencies" that
professional public administrators should have, and to which the schools should aim in
their curricula and instruction. As it was worked out by the Committee, the matrix was
summarized on a spread sheet that began with several subject-matter areas listed down the
left side: Political, Social, and Economic Context; Analytical Tools; Individual, Group,
and Organizational Behavior; Policy Analysis; and Administrative/Management Processes. For
each subject-matter area, appropriate knowledge, skills, and behavior were elaborated in
successive columns to the right. Engelbert not only invited all of NASPAA to help fill out
the matrix but induced several of the professional organizations to set up committees of
practitioners to tell the professors what they ought to teach. The complete matrix offered
something for everyone. But --he approach to standards--basing them on competencies of
graduates rather than the organization, size, and resources of the teaching entity--made
sense to the academic conservatives and contributed greatly to eventual acceptance of the
Committee's work. In its report to the 1974 annual conference at Syracuse, the
Standards committee reviewed the case for a decisive statement of "guidelines and
standards": enormous diversity of program curricula and degree requirements,
generally unrationalized by clear distinctions of program purpose and clientele; low
credibility of the schools' degrees among professionals and government agencies; the
"cheap degree" problem; and the need of institutions intending to do the right
thing for authoritative guidance. The matrix was offered as an intellectual base for
professional education, with flexibility to accommodate programs with special purposes.
The "Guidelines and Standards" statement proposed for adoption incorporated the
matrix and then ventured to spell out minimal institutional characteristics for offering
MPA degrees in terms still familiar in NASPAA: programs ideally two academic years in
length, with a minimum of a calendar year of course work even for students with relevant
experience; a faculty of "not less than five," offering both academic and
professional qualifications; an organizational entity "which possesses the same
degree of independence accorded other professional schools and departments within the
institution"; a designated faculty with substantial control of the program's content
and requirements and its own personnel actions; and appropriate supporting services in the
form of libraries and student services. To the disappointment of some, the guidelines did
not prescribe any required period of residential study that might have put a crimp in the
off-campus programs; the latter would be acceptable if conducted under proper supervision
and with degree requirements and resources equivalent to those on the home campuses. As to implementation of its report, the Standards Committee noted
that the idea of accreditation had been considered but put aside for fear of
"over-standardization and conformity at the expense of program innovation and
creativity," and in recognition that the existing diversity in NASPAA would make
accreditation "an undesirable system to impose and perhaps impossible to
implement." The preferred course was to let each institution apply the document in
its own way, if it chose to do so. The Committee report recommended, however, that member
institutions be encouraged to undertake self-studies with reference to the guidelines and
standards, and that NASPAA be prepared to suggest outside consultants and
reader-commentators on self-study reports if requested to do so. It was further
recommended that NASPAA reproduce and distribute to the membership, for its edification,
summaries of the findings and recommendations of any self-study reports submitted to it. The Standards Committee's process, the content of its report, and
the emphasis on voluntarism proved persuasive. The annual meeting accepted the report and
endorsed the "Guidelines and Standards," including the proposed implementation
process, without a dissenting vote recorded. So confident was the leadership in the
outcome that Engelbert had already promised the Belmont conferees that NASPAA would pass
and implement the report. The next three years brought further commitment to the standards
strategy. An expanded Standards Committee, now chaired by Engelbert, developed and secured
membership approval of guidelines for undergraduate and doctoral programs and for
internships. Those documents were published but left to stand for what anyone might make
of them, while the Committee concentrated on trying to implement the master's guidelines
as authorized by the 1974 annual meeting. It was, at first, a messy process. By 1977, 39
institutions (out of a membership approaching 200) had turned in voluntary self-evaluation
studies. Committee scrutiny of the reports showed great unevenness in their
interpretations of the guidelines and overall quality. Equally variable were the comments
of NASPAA-assigned readers of the reports. The matrix was so broad that opinions might
differ widely as to how a given curriculum stacked up against it. Reader assessments
sometimes conflicted sharply with a school's self-perception, and candor caused pain.
After a couple years of struggle with the materials, the Committee gave up the idea of
publishing individual reports and reader comments (as anyone familiar with academic
sensitivity might have anticipated); NASPAA had learned the importance of confidentiality.
But instead of backing off, the Standards Committee pushed on with
measures to get more uniformity into the process. In the 1976-77 Year the Committee, under
the chairmanship of Daniel Pore of Penn State, produced a guide or manual for
institutional self-evaluation studies, and began the practice of having each report read
by three readers, now called a "peer review panel," who submitted a joint
report. The Committee also sponsored several workshops in different parts of the country,
where Committee members, peer review readers, and representatives of regional institutions
threshed through problems of applying the guidelines. Also in 1976-77 the standards strategy received a strong push from a
temporary Committee on Long-Range Goals. Appointed by President Charles F. Bonser of
Indiana, who was determined to make his tenure a transforming year for NASPAA, the Goals
Committee was a cross-section of past and future NASPAA leadership, including such rising
stars and future Presidents as Clinton Oster of Ohio State, Donald Stokes of Princeton,
and James Kitchen of San Diego State, not to mention the senior and esteemed Dwight Waldo
of Syracuse. A cogent chapter in the Goals report, by Oster, reviewed the spectrum of
future possibilities for NASPAA in the area of program evaluation, ranging from
continuation of voluntary self-evaluation to formal accreditation, which was discussed in
terms designed to dispel ignorance and fear in the membership. in its recommendations the
Goals Committee, without saying why, stepped back from accreditation by that name and
proposed a more formalized peer review process that had most of the elements of
accreditation: self-study according to a prescribed format; site visit by a NASPAA
designated team; review of the entire record in terms of the standards; and a specific
finding whether the program was "in substantial conformity" with the standards.
Finally, NASPAA would publish a list of programs found in "substantial
conformity." At the 1977 annual meeting in Colorado Springs, Bonser and the
Executive Council, the Goals Committee, and the Standards Committee lined up behind the
new proposal. Debate ensued, of the kind that might have occurred over adoption of the
standards but had not. Old arguments about consistency and quality versus diversity and
possibilities for innovation appeared again. Some of the smaller programs, especially
those in political science departments, feared they would never be able to meet the
requirements of organizational identity and self-determination. Most sensitive were the
proposals for site visits and determinations of substantial conformity. Was this not
accreditation in all but name? The leadership blandly insisted it was different and
emphasized that entry into the process was voluntary and would not affect an institution's
status in NASPAA. Finally, patient explanations and respect for the new scheme's sponsors
carried the day. Especially effective (according to this writer's memory) were the calm
persuasiveness of Bob Biller of Southern California, for the Standards Committee, and the
esteemed Don K. Price of Harvard who rose on the floor to support the proposal. The proposal passed by a substantial margin, but not without a few
resounding "NO" votes. Although it remained to be seen how many institutions
would enter the process, NASPAA now had, only seven years later, what had been
emphatically rejected at Princeton: formal standards and an official list of approved
programs--from which many member universities almost certainly would be absent. After Colorado Springs great care was taken to install a process
that would be administrable, consistent, and acceptable to the membership. The Standards
Committee revised the original "guidelines and standards" document into a form
now frankly labeled as Standards. The new document abandoned the matrix as official
doctrine, although traces of it were incorporated in the standard on curriculum. The
institutional requisites about faculty qualifications, jurisdiction, and organization
status were spelled out. The Executive Council created a new Peer Review Committee to
oversee the implementation. This body perfected the self-study manual, developed a site
visit manual, discussed interpretation of the standards at great length in open meetings,
and held training sessions for potential site visitors. Institutional reviews started in
1978-79, and in 1980 the first list of programs "in substantial conformity" was
published. After three more years of experience, mostly favorable, the 1983 annual meeting
voted to convert the process to formal accreditation and seek recognition of NASPAA as an
official accrediting agency. With a bit more touching-up of the process and in the
fullness of time, this recognition was accorded by the Council on Postsecondary
Accreditation in 1986. The years 1973-77, then, brought rapid development of the standards
strategy that would soon dominate NASPAA's activities. To be sure, the 1977 Goals report
also called for a stepped-up governmental relations program, but it also suggested a
legislative agenda that would be "spare, credible, and achievable--not a wish
list," along with expanding relations with federal agencies on such subjects as
training and marketing of graduates. In the next few years NASPAA tended its crops like
Title IX, IPA, PMIP, and the Public Administration Fellows, and there was a considerable
amount of "leasing" with CSC-OPM as long as Campbell was there, but as we have
seen, federal policy had already curtailed possibilities in training, and the era brought
no significant new governmental benefits to the NASPAA programs before erosion set in
after 1980. How much did anyone care? After all, the Goals report had recommended that
"NASPAA define the key reason for membership as commitment to the development of
education for public affairs and administration rather than the expectation of a flow of
services to member programs." After several years of study, I can record a detailed account of
what happened in CGEPA and NASPAA through the 1970s, and have some insight into the
underlying forces that shaped events. The study provides a few tantalizing glimpses of
"what might have been": aspirations unrealized, possibilities not seized, and
unpredictable breaks of timing and personalities. The study does not seem to have yielded
any startling new interpretations or grand theory. (How very public administration am I!) A sociologist student of the natural history of organizations
probably would see familiar stuff in the history of NASPAA: an entity with a foothold in a
certain organizational niche, early growth in a benign climate and quick leveling-off as
the limits of support were reached, a tendency toward autonomy, increasing formality of
structure and procedure) and proliferation of internal parts. Also, perhaps, an equally to
be expected narrowing of purpose, hardening of goals. NASPAA's neonatal struggle to establish a life was fortunately
brief. The leadership did the essential organizational dirty work, while consolidating the
membership by avoiding controversy and dispensing benefits that came to hand. NASPAA grew
on what its environment offered: an expanding potential constituency in an exploding world
of higher education, and largesse from foundations and government available to
opportunistic pursuit. At the same time, and without much conscious thought about it,
NASPAA accepted a sphere of membership and influence far narrower than its most ambitious
founders had hoped for. NASPAA arrived too late in the process of academic/professional
differentiation to organize everything within the conceptual reach of "public affairs
and administration." After ten years, although its constituency was larger and
altered in some respects, the core constituency and center of leadership was not greatly
different from that of 1970. NASPAA's principal environmental spheres of government and higher
education, although permissive up to a point, proved essentially unyielding to NASPAA's
most imaginative aspirations. NASPAA and the public affairs and administration schools
remain basically supplicants, not partners, in government. Somewhat greater success has
been achieved in establishing for those schools an identity and appropriate organizational
status in higher education. But the success is far from secure or universal. Despite
NASPAA-promulgated doctrine, few of its constituents have fully succeeded in becoming the
principal embodiment of their institutions' elusive obligation of public service. In a familiar and probably inevitable process of organization
splitting, NASPAA sprouted under the shelter of a broader entity, ASPA, and over a couple
of decades sorted out a special following and separated from the parent. Ironically,
NASPAA's adolescent wish-fulfillment of autonomy coincided with the most effective nurture
from ASPA and its related complex of professional organizations. Title IX funding could
not have been secured without the aid of other organizations, and encouragement and
not-too-subtle pressure from the professional community helped to convince the membership
at large to fall in behind the leadership in adopting the guidelines and standards for
master's degree programs in 1974. A decade after the founding, NASPAA seems to have turned inward to
its constituency, accepting a future of maneuvering within well defined space of
membership and action possibilities. It had foregone (or at least accepted the
unproductiveness of) feverish pursuit of benefits from government and other external
sources. It was giving primary attention to marshalling and disciplining its constituency
by proclaiming and applying standards. By doing so, it sought to strengthen both the
self-perception and reality of academic quality, and to enhance its members' status in
both government and higher education. An adequate evaluation of that process remains for
the future. Presumably it has to a considerable degree improved the consistency and
quality of product. It remains doubtful how much standards and accreditation have done for
external perceptions of the field and the profession. At any rate, the standards strategy, accompanied by astute
leadership and nurturing of resources, has provided a base for NASPAA's evident success
and prosperity in the early 1990s. One must ask whether this core function, at least as
presently defined, will be sufficient to sustain the organization for another
quarter-century. |
©
NASPAA - The Global Standard in Public Service Education Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration 1029 Vermont Avenue, NW, Suite 1100, Washington, DC 20005 Phone: 202.628.8965 Fax: 202.626.4978 Email NASPAA www.naspaa.org |