MPAs and MPPAs Going Public

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By Marion Anthonisen

For aspiring public-sector managers, a master’s degree in Public Administration (MPA) or Public Policy and Administration (MPPA) may boost the chances of a promotion. Or not.
    The truth is, government employment requirements are more flexible than you might expect, especially at the city and county management levels.
    Sacramento’s city manager, Ray Kerridge, holds neither an MPA nor an MPPA. Managing a city, he believes, is more art than science, and advanced-degree classes won’t necessarily help someone become a better manager. The job requires a mix of intuition and refined communication skills. “You have to work on a number of levels,” Kerridge explains. “You must be able to bounce all over the place, to be durable and adaptive.”
    While outsiders might perceive public-sector work to be stuffy or mechanical, local and national governments are subject to their fair share of human complexity. “Every personal (inter)action has its own quirks, and the groups we’re dealing with are all different,” says Kerridge. “(In college), I took classes on organizational development, and we discussed the tendency of the group, sample sizes, statistics.
    But in the day-to-day, you’re dealing with one person. The whole thing’s about communication. You have to be able to make a connection on a personal level.”
    Kerridge admits that a city manager must have a “high tolerance for repetition,” but the job doesn’t revolve around yawn-worthy paperwork. Successful leadership in the public sector requires good intuition, Kerridge says. “There are so many random variables, and you have to have your antennae up most of the time.”
    While Kerridge considers interpersonal factors paramount in public-sector management, it’s always “good to have a foundation, a groundwork,” he adds. In other words, obtaining an MPA or an MPPA might not be such a bad idea.
    For those who hope to rise in the public sector ranks, master’s degrees are increasingly, if unofficially, expected. The MPA, which trains students for public service management and program implementation, is often combined with the MPP (master of public policy), which focuses on policy design and analysis. But Sacramento State’s nationally respected MPPA is one such fusion program. Ted Lascher, professor and chair of the Public Policy and Administration Graduate Program, emphasizes the flexibility of studies in public administration. “Our graduates are all over state government: transportation, health services, the state board of education, lobbying firms,” says Lascher. “This is a good generalist degree.”
    An MPA is to the public sector as an MBA is to the private sector. While an MPA isn’t the only way to go, the degree may be preferred by government employers over generalist graduate programs like the MBA. “Managing the public sector is different from managing the private sector,” says Lascher. “The external constraints are complex, and there are more ambiguities.”
    Sacramento State’s MPPA is unique among public policy and administration programs because of its focus on local politics and on collaborative work. The program is “unabashedly state and locally focused,” Lascher says, and a disproportionate number of its graduates enter work at the state or local level. The faculty and course of study are closely connected with state government.
    MPPA students at Sacramento State can choose to specialize in collaborative governance, a division that focuses on efforts to resolve complicated multi-party disputes in the public sector. Lascher describes the program as one of the first of its kind in the country. In the private sector, ambitious businesses hypothetically can claw their way to the top without necessarily forming alliances and hammering out agreements. Public work, on the other hand, requires that a wide variety of government agencies maintain civil relations with one another. Conflict abatement among public sector groups is not always straightforward problem-solving, and students who take these collaborative governance courses may have an edge over their competition when it comes to bridging seemingly irresolvable communication gaps.
    Potential students are drawn to the program’s diverse faculty, whose research in urban policy, higher education, direct democracy, high-school-to-college transitions and regulatory policy, among other specializations, make for a well-rounded in-class experience.
    When AnnMarie Boylan decided to obtain her MPA, she was juggling motherhood and a full-time position as senior administrative analyst for Sacramento’s Office of the County Executive. Boylan took a semester’s worth of classes at Sacramento State but ultimately turned to Golden Gate University’s Sacramento campus in search of a program that flexed in accordance with her jam-packed schedule.
    Because it is a broad, versatile degree, Boylan says the MPA encouraged her to look at situations from a global perspective. “When you’re working in individual departments,” she says, “you tend to have a narrower policy perspective.” Golden Gate’s MPA is an “executive” degree, and all entrants to the program must have some previous experience working in the public sector. In January, Boylan became chief of correctional health services for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department, due in part to her MPA, which will be hers to keep as of June 2007.
    Boylan notes that local governments have recently experienced a wave of retirements: “Right now, the need for public sector management is acute.” So, MPA or not, if Boylan were a career counselor, she would advise getting into public administration, and quick. Having that degree may also steer you on a more direct course toward your top-choice managerial job. 

Read the rest of Prosper's special education package, including:

Transform Yourself, Madam, Esq., Dr. New School, Working-Class Heroine, MBA Programs Dare to Improve 

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