Abstract:

One of the main objectives of Public Administration (PA) education is to prepare the graduate to work with real-world object (organization, city, municipality, or region). It means that the graduate should be capable to develop the real-world object. It demands to find the balance between the theoretical studies and practice, between giving knowledge and training skills. The program based on giving knowledge can give more fundamental education but it is modestly correlated with the real public administration processes. The study of the existing experience and practice correlate with the real-world public administration processes but can make graduates of the programs excessively conservative. Traditionally knowledge is expected to be the “door” in future and practice is always a “look into the past”. In our research we study how is it possible to combine the positive features of these approaches. In the professional community there is no idea how to keep the balance between knowledge and skills in the organization of education programs. As a result bachelor and the majority of master PA programs are based on “knowledge” approach and programs of postgraduate PA education are based on training skills. As a consequence graduates need to continue education on the workplace.

The majority of universities introduce the elements of practical skills training in PA education programs. Different cases exist but there is no effective mechanism of the organisation of practice-oriented programs in the university. The absence of such mechanisms reduces the quality of PA education and limits the perspectives of getting skills of working with the real-world object of PA. In this article we analysed the experience of two Russian universities in adaptation of academic programs to the objectives of practice-oriented education. We think one of the possible solutions is to make the education process “real world case-oriented”.

We suggest two possible variants of the design of “real world object-oriented” education programs. The first variant is to study the real-world objects (cases) during the research seminar. The disciplines of the curricula should be connected with the studies of the real-world object (case). The second variant of the design of the program is to join the disciplines of the curricula in functional modules: law, social sphere, economy, management, strategic planning. These two variants could be joined in one education program.

Keywords:

Public administration education, practice-oriented education, real-world object.