reputation, size, and student success in public administration/affairs programs

Reputation, Size, and Student Success in Public Administration/Affairs ProgramsAuthor(s): William C. AdamsSource: Public Administration Review, Vol. 43, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 1983), pp. 443-446Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Society for Public AdministrationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/975851 .

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STIMULATING ENERGY CONSERVATION BY HOMEOWNERS 443

work for Analysis and Policy Formulation," Journal of Business Administration, Vol. 10, No. 1 and 2 (Fall 1978/Spring 1979), pp. 165-181.

18. Richard Weijo, unpublished doctoral dissertation (in progress), University of Minnesota. Contact author for further informa-

tion about this study. 19. June M. Wheeler and Peter H. Herzog, A Study of the Effec-

tiveness of the Weatherization Program in Minnesota (Min- neapolis: Bakke Kopp Ballou and McFarlin, Inc., 1983).

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Reputation, Size, and Student Success in Public Administrationl Affairs Programs William C. Adams, George Washington University

Two recent articles by David R. Morgan and Kenneth J. Meier in Public Administration Review (Nov. /Dec. 1981, 666-673; March/April 1982, 171-173) have reported the reputations of M.P.A. programs. Morgan and Meier based their findings on surveys of academics and practitioners. They suggest that the next step is to examine which factors seem most to influence these reputations.

Morgan and Meier comment: "Although we have no data to verify this, we suspect the practitioner's percep- tions of school quality is based on the quality of graduates the person has met." They also note the advantage of "larger schools" in simply having a higher number of graduates.

One would surely expect the quality and quantity of a program's graduates to shape its reputation-especially among practitioners who would seem likely to be more impressed by individual administrators they encounter than by counts of the university affiliations of authors of academic journal articles. How then can one measure the "quality" of program graduates?

Certainly there is no ideal measure, and any surrogate is open to various criticisms; however, one credible measure is available. In 1978, the Office of Personnel Management initiated a highly selective, nationwide

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1983

* David Morgan and Kenneth Meier's recent studies have reported the reputations of M.P.A. programs among academics and among practitioners. They suggested that reputation may be influenced by the number of students graduating from a program as well as by the accomplishments of those students.

This research contrasts the reputational rankings of academics and practitioners with program rankings for the number of students awarded Presidential Management Internships (PMIs). With a few exceptions, most of the programs producing the most PMIs were those which had ranked highest in general reputation.

Using the number of M.P.A.s graduated in 1980-81 as the measure of program size, it was found that many of the largest programs had not ranked high-either in Morgan and Meier's surveys or in PMI successes. Program size alone is clearly not the primary reason for program reputations.

competition for Presidential Management Internships (PMIs).

William C. Adams is associate professor of public administration at George Washington University. His most recent book is one he edited entitled Television Coverage of the 1980 Presidential Campaign (Ablex, 1983).



444 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW

OPM's strategy was to use the PMI competition as a way to locate, as then Director Alan Campbell put it, the top "new recipients of graduate degrees in general management with a public sector focus," and then essentially to put them on an attractive "fast track" with responsible two-year internships in key positions in several dozen departments and agencies. In fact, the program proved to be enormously successful and thou- sands of talented students throughout the country have sought the internships over the past six years.

Students must successfully pass a series of stringent hurdles in order to attain the status of a PMI. First, deans and graduate program directors screen their own students to determine their nominees. An average of nearly 850 students have been nominated each year; they typically come from between 150 and 200 colleges and universities in all 50 states, the District of Colum- bia, and Puerto Rico.

At the next phase, panels review the written applications and letters of recommendation. (This step is now used to choose semi-finalists.) Finally, the "blue- ribbon" committees put the students through a rigorous, all-day series of small-group exercises, tests, and personal interviews. From these remaining several hundred students are selected the roughly 200 finalist PMIs.

PMI Success

Of the 202 colleges and universities whose students have been awarded PMIs over the past six years, only 29 schools have had one dozen or more PMIs. Only these 29 schools have averaged at least two PMIs per year. These top placing schools are ranked in Table 1.

More than half of all PMIs (53 percent) came from these 29 universities. Nearly one-third of all PMIs (29 percent) have come from the top ten universities- Southern California, Harvard, Columbia, American, Indiana, North Carolina, Princeton, Texas, George Washington, and Syracuse.

The university-wide rankings are somewhat mislead- ing, however, because they represent the totals from each university, regardless of the particular program and degrees of the students. Although the Southern California figures are contributed entirely by the School of Public Administration, the totals for Columbia Uni- versity, for example, aggregate PMI winners from the School of International Studies, the Graduate School of Architecture and Planning, the School of Social Work, the Graduate School of Business, and the Department of Education Administration, as well as the Graduate Program in Public Affairs and Administration.

For the 1981-83 period, the O.P.M. announcements made it possible to tally the number of PMIs from particular programs at colleges and universities. This allows identification of the success of M.P.A.-granting programs in the PMI competition. Results of this competition are shown in Table 2.

With only a few exceptions, programs that placed the most Presidential Management Interns tended to be those with the most prestige among scholars and practi-

TABLE 1 PMIs by University, 1978-83 Totals

Rank University PMI Awards

1 Southern California 63 2 Harvard 61 3 Columbia 41 4 American 38 5 Indiana 37 6 North Carolina 31 7 Princeton 29

Texas 29 9 George Washington 28

Syracuse 28 11 Michigan 27 12 Brigham Young 26 13 Pittsburgh 25 14 Ohio State 21 15 Chicago 20

New York 20 Washington 20

18 California, Berkeley 17 19 California, Irvine 16

Cornell 16 Pennsylvania State 16

22 Golden Gate 15 23 California, Los Angeles 14 24 Arizona 13

Colorado 13 Florida State 13 Portland State 13

28 Johns Hopkins 12 California State, Fullerton 12

TABLE 2 PMIs and Programs, 1981-83 Totals

PMI Rank University Program Awards

1 Harvard Kennedy School 23 2 Indiana Public/Environmental

Affairs 20 3 Princeton Wilson School 18 4 American College of Public Affairs 16

George Washington Public Administration Department 16

6 Brigham Young Institute of Government Services 15

Southern California School of Public Administration 15

Texas Johnson School 15 9 Pittsburgh Public/International

Affairs 14 10 Michigan Institute of Public Policy 13

Syracuse Maxwell School 13 12 Ohio State School of Public

Administration II




RESEARCH NOTE 445

tioners. Ten of the top 12 PMI programs were ranked among the top 12 MPA programs in Morgan and Meier's survey of academics. Similarly, nine of the top 12 PMI programs were ranked among the top 12 MPA programs in the survey of practitioners.

There were some discrepancies. Three programs placed many more PMIs than their reputational rankings would have predicted, and one program placed sig- nificantly fewer. Second place behind the Kennedy School went to Indiana's School of Public and Environ- mental Affairs which had 20 PMIs; while academics had ranked that program 6th, practitioners had only ranked it 21st.

Perhaps a greater disparity was the success of students from Brigham Young University's Institute for Government Services. That program tied for 6th in PMIs but was ranked only 47th by practitioners and was not ranked in the top 50 by academics. Also, Ohio State's School of Public Administration ranked higher in number of PMIs (12th) than it was ranked by practitioners (27th) or academics (22nd). At the other ex- treme, the University of California at Berkeley was ranked 4th in the nation by both academics and practitioners, but had few PMI awards in the 1981-83 period.

Table 3 summarizes the ratings compiled from Morgan and Meier's surveys. Rankings by the practitioners came closer to predicting the PMI success of program graduates than did the rankings of Morgan and Meier's academics for six of the top 12 PMI programs. However, the academics' rankings came closer for five programs; the two groups tied in one program. (Cf. Tables 2 and 3.)

Despite the noted exceptions, it is interesting that PMI records did correlate generally with program images. This represents some empirical confirmation that the reputations are not entirely an echo of decades past.

TABLE 3 Program Rankings by Practitioners and Academics

Practitioners' Academics' Rank University Rank

1 Harvard 2 2 Syracuse 1 3 Southern California 3 4 California, Berkeley 4 5 George Washington 11 6 Princeton 5 7 American 10 8 Michigan 9 9 Chicago 12

10 Kansas 21 11 Columbia 22 12 Texas 7 13 Pittsburgh 8

Source: D. Morgan and K. Meier, Public Administration Review, March/April 1982, p. 172.


TABLE 4 M.P.A.s Granted 1980-81 by Program

Rank in Size University Program MP.AAs

1 Southern California School of Public Administration 437

2 Golden Gate School of Public Administration 413

3 New York School of Public Administration 229

4 Harvard Kennedy School 203 5 Roosevelt School of Management 125 6 Colorado School of Public Affairs 114 7 Syracuse Maxwell School 105 8 New Mexico Public Administration

Division 103 9 Pittsburgh School of Public/

International Affairs 90 10 Pennsylvania State Institute Public Admin. 88 11 Indiana School of Public/

Environmental Affairs 87 12 American College of Public Affairs 84 13 California State, Center for Public Policy/

Long Beach Administration 81 14 Missouri, Kansas City Cookingham Institute 79 15 Northeastern Department of Political

Science 74 16 Brigham Young Institute Govt. Services 69 17 SUNY, Stony Brook Harriman College 65 18 Baltimore Department of Political

Science 62 19 Oklahoma Program in Public

Administration 59 20 Auburn, Montgomery Department of Government 58 21 Southwest Texas State Department of Political

Science 57 Suffolk School of Management 57 Western Michigan Center for Public

Administration 57 24 George Washington Department of Public

Administration 55 25 California State, Department of Public

Hayward Administration 54 26 Rutgers, Newark M.P.A. Program 53

Compiled from "Programs in Public Affairs and Administration: 1982 Directory" (Washington, D.C.: NASPAA, 1982).

Program Size

Does student success produce program reputations, or do strong program reputations attract successful students? A considerable amount of circularity is probably at work here: A good program gets good students who in turn further enhance the visibility and image of the program and attract more good students.

Morgan and Meier suggest that larger schools have a reputational advantage due to their number of graduates. But, to what extent are the reputations and student successes reviewed above actually a function of the domination of large programs?



446 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW

Drawing on program reports to the National Associa- tion of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA), it is possible to rank the largest M.P.A.- granting programs. Table 4 ranks programs by the number of M.P.A. degrees programs stated they conferred during 1980-81. The 26 programs with more than 50 M.P.A. graduates are listed.

Together these 26 largest programs produced nearly six out of 10 of all the M.P.A.s (59 percent) granted in the United States. (In fact, more than one-third of all M.P.A.s came from a mere eight programs.) Neverthe- less, it is clear from a comparison of Table 4 with Tables 1-3 that size alone does not predict reputation.

More than half of the largest programs listed in Table 4 were not ranked among the top 50 by either practitioners or academics in Morgan and Meier's surveys. The sheer number of graduates does not appear to be the primary explanation for program reputations.

Although not all of the larger programs appear in the surveys as nationally prestigious, it is still true that most of the more prestigious programs are relatively large; so perhaps size can help-but it does not alone determine reputations.

Image and status are always curious sociological phenomena. The dynamics through which reputations emerge and evolve are never entirely clear, nor are they ever likely to be entirely "fair." Some people and in- stitutions may enjoy inflated and unjustified attention while others may not receive the recognition they merit.

No survey or set of rankings can ever assess the quality of education which a particular student is likely to obtain in a given program. But, while we all know the many limitations and dangers in these sorts of reputational studies, it is hard to resist wondering how we appear to our peers-or rather, it is hard to resist scholarly analyses of the dynamics of comparative institutional productivity and credibility.

The School -University of Pennsylvania

Ph.D. and M.A. programs in Public Policy Analysis and Management The Wharton School is pleased to announce the relocation of the Ph.D. and M.A. degree programs of the Graduate Group in Public Policy Analysis (formerly the School of Public and Urban Policy) to The Wharton School on July 1, 1983. These degree programs will complement Wharton's current MBA program in Public Management.

Students interested in public policy research and analysis should send inquiries and requests for applications for admission in September, 1983 for the Ph.D. and M.A. degree programs in Public Policy Analysis and Management to:

Professor Janet R. Pack, Chairperson Graduate Group in Public Policy Analysis The Wharton School University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104

MBA program in Public Management Students interested in management of the public sector or management of industries strongly influenced by government, should send inquiries about the MBA program in Public Management to:

Professor Anita A. Summers The Wharton School University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104

Applications for admission to the MBA program In the Wharton School can be obtained from

David W. Bloom Director of Admissions Wharton Graduate Division University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104




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