Teaching the Craft of Policy and Management Analysis: The Workshop Sequence at Columbia University's Graduate Program in Public Policy and Administration

Abstract

Although the knowledge base and methods of microeconomics, operations research, social psychology, statistics, and organization and communication theory provide critical concepts to public sector professionals as they struggle through the tasks described above, they are not designed to solve public policy problems and they are not capable of so. The direct application of these tools to policy problems is rare. How do public sector professionals learn to craft solutions to the problems they face? They learn by doing. They apprentice with senior practitioners of the craft and learn how to interpret problems and environments and to structure solutions and sell them. They learn when to move fast, when to slow down, what is feasible, and why. Learning by doing ultimately takes place on the job, not in school. Unfortunately, policy analysts and managers often learn the wrong lessons in the early stages of their careers; they sometimes learn a form of bureaucratic conservatism that facilitates organizational maintenance rather than publicsector problem solving. They may learn to use information to buttress preset positions rather than to help decide the best course of action. Given the gulf between academic theory and methods on the one hand and the often chaotic, always political, reality of public practice, they may be frustrated as they find it difficult to apply their education to their jobs.