Introduction to the symposium on international and comparative public administration education

We live in a global society. Our countries may maintain their own borders and bureaucratic structures, but the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the problems that arouse out of it have highlighted the intermingled relationship we have with all parts of the globe (McDonald et al., 2022). The interconnectedness of the globe can even be seen from our own experience as co-editors-in-chief of the Journal of Public Affairs Education. In the early days of the pandemic, printing of the journal was temporarily halted as our publisher had challenges getting access to paper from its distributor in one country, trouble shipping the paper to its printer in another, and finally delivering the hardcopies to the United States. Although this example focuses on JPAE, we are not alone. What happens in one country impacts and effects those around it. But what does this mean for public affairs education? From our standpoint, we believe that it means we should be preparing our students to engage in an international arena.

Over the past five years we have sought to use our role as co-editors-in-chief to shape the discussion around what we should teach and how we should teach students in public administration programs. While we have seen the importance of an improved understanding of international and comparative public administration arise, we have not seen the field react as we would hope. Currently, only about a fifth of programs accredited by the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA) have a course offering in this area for their students (Manoharan et al., 2022). We believe that this is nowhere near high enough. After all, if you think that the public administration programs of the United States do not need more focus on international and comparative public administration, you might consider taking a second look at who your students are. A growing demographic within all MPA programs in the United States is that of international student, many of whom intend to return to their countries and become public servants after graduation. Even if the courses had little meaning for students staying in country after graduation, do we not have a responsibility for training those students who will go out afterwards?

Our intent with this symposium to start broaching the issue in a more public setting. When planning the symposium, we invited authors to explore all facets and corners of the international and comparative world and its relevancy for public administration. The result is the collection of six papers that are presented to you here. Each article takes its own view of topic, ranging from explorations of what we should teach students and why to the challenges that our international counterparts face with their own teaching and research. We are excited to be able to publish six new pieces of research, but we also believe that these pieces of research are just a beginning. More work is needed, we know this, but we hope that the pieces provided here will help inspire the journal’s readership to incorporate more international and comparative principles into their classroom, and, with a little luck, maybe even engage in research into international and comparative public administration on their own.

No introduction to a symposium would be complete without also introducing the articles that comprise the symposium. In the first piece of the symposium, Manoharan et al. (2022) study the pedagogical efforts of 67 NASPAA-accredited programs that offer a specialization in global/comparative administration and policy. To conduct their analysis, the authors studied the concentration titles, course titles and descriptions, and course syllabi. Manoharan et al. (2022) found that there were 2 unique concentrations offered within the field and that graduates of MPA programs have access to 279 courses as core or elective offerings. While this number may seem large, it only accounts for about 1/5^th of all MPA programs in the United States.

In the second piece of the symposium, Leight and Abbott (2022) explore the role of comparative public administration (CPA) in the MPA classroom. In their student, Leight and Abbott note that in a globalizing society, graduates of MPA programs uch be prepared to work across countries and cultures (see also Aoki et al., 2022; Farrell et al., 2022; McCandless et al., 2022). In their exploration, the authors discuss the history of CPA within the field, paying attention to the debate within the literature surround the approaches to CPA teaching and research. Then, using the history of the field as a basis, they establish five learning objectives that can be used when teaching a course in CPA or when incorporating CPA into an existing course. Their study ends with a discussion about instructional approaches that can be used to teach the objectives, including a list of recommended readings.

Next, Baniamin and Ramasamy (2022) explore the challenges of public administration education in developing countries. Using interviews of faculty from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, the authors identified a number of challenges that are both teaching-related and research-related. According to Baniamin and Ramasamy, teaching-related challenges include the problem with curriculum, materials, teaching methods, student-teacher ratio, and the scope of capacity building, whereas research-related challenges include access to funding, data availability, research training, and access to software. In combination, these problems create barriers to quality public administration education. Although the study focused on just two developing countries, the results and implications of the study extend to all developing countries around the world.

The next article is by Tayaban and O’Leary (2022). In their article, Tayaban and O’Leary analyzed a Peace Corps Response project that was intended to help faculty at a rural university in the Philippines mitigate the publishing process. The article highlights the major challenges that international scholars often face when they seek to publish their research. These challenges include the restricted access to the current literature of their field, lack of training, and limited resources to assist in the process. Based on their experience with the project, they provided a series of recommendations to level the playing field for scholars around the world. Central among the recommendations include increased internet access and open access to the scholarly literature.

Yan et al. (2022) continue the discussion of international and comparative administration by reflecting on how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted student engagement in an international context. The pandemic changed the nature in how many graduate programs taught their courses, shifting much of the work to online modalities. The change in course modality had impacts on both the students of MPA programs and their faculty. Yan et al. (2022) found that more institutional support is needed for online programs that want to increase the effectiveness of student engagement. Online modalities also impact the burden of faculty, with many faculty members reporting higher workloads and reduced work-life balance when teaching online classes.

The last research article in the international and comparative public administration symposia is by McDougle et al. (2022), which explores the use of experiential philanthropy in the public affairs classroom. According to McDougle et al. (2022), experiential philanthropy is a hands-on teaching approach that teaches students about social issues and nonprofit organizations and provides them with funds to distribute to nonprofits that they believe are best suited to address the social issues they learn about (see also Campbell et al., 2022; Li et al., 2020; Taggart, 2022). Most of the research into experiential philanthropy, however, has been focused on the United States and in the short-term. McDougle et al. (2022) address this issue by exploring how experiential philanthropy is associated with long-term philanthropic and prosocial outcomes of former participants. This was tested using undergraduate students from a university in the United States and another in northeastern China. The results support that experiential philanthropy has a successful and long-term impact on students across cultures.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).