Reorganization involving the Eller College of Management’s School of Public Administration and Policy and Other Departments

Although I agree with Dean Portney on his view that business students can benefit from having knowledge about the public and nonprofit sectors and that public administration students have something to gain by learning certain business methodology I have not seen this played out in reality. Having recently received my MPA this past May, I can say that absolutely none of the courses in the business school intrigued me or appeared relevant to my interests in non profit management. Of course, public administrators need a fundamental understanding of budget management, economics and finance. However, these topics must be presented in the context of public policy which the business school simply can not do. A public management track will not provide the depth of knowledge required of a 21st century public administrator. Serving now as a director at a large non profit agency here in Tucson, the skills and knowledge I use everyday include understanding government funding allocations, network facilitation, coalition-building, public policy analysis, community engagement, and grant writing. Without a doubt, I would have been ill-prepared in my current job had I only taken a public management track completely buried deep within the Eller College of Management.

As a finance professor, I would like to offer a quick assessment of the budget savings provided in this white paper as well as the response provided by Brint Milward. I would make a couple of stipulations. First, I do not have the numbers to make a true assessment of the cost savings, and instead I will focus on broader issues. Second, I am not an unbiased observer as my wife is a lecturer in SPAP. As to the competing proposals for budgetary savings, I would note: 1. SPAP's numbers could be criticized as assuming that the school would lose all the fees, when in fact he is arguing for a Public Administration track. 2. The Dean’s proposal doesn’t account for any incremental lost revenue from the loss of students in the three majors in the BSPA and MPA. Clearly, this change would result in losing some students and all incremental fees would be lost. 3. As it relates to point 2, I think a reasonable assumption is to assume that the school will lose all incremental fees from the criminal justice students, which is 250 students. What is harder to assess is how many students Eller would lose if you offered only a PA track. This is obviously very hard to assess. 4. I think an even bigger issue is that it seems safe to assume that the University will lower its payments to the school of management to reflect the loss ~ 250 criminal justice students as proposed in the white paper. Clearly, some of the funding from the University that flows to the school of management currently would be diverted and follow the students. An ad hoc calculation would be something like; criminal justice represents 4% of the undergrad students in Eller. If 60% of the school of management’s funding from the University is related to undergrad education (I have no idea if this is correct) but this suggests that University funding of the undergrad program would be $25MM * 60% or $15MM (I am assuming the $25MM as a 4% budget cut was $1MM). Hence, if the funding follows the criminal justice students to the new college, this suggests that Eller lose approximately 4% of the $15MM in undergrad funding from the university or $600k from the University. 5. Overall, I think the Dean’s proposal would probably save the school of management some money (administrative salaries), but as it relates to the whole University any cost savings would be irrelevant as the students still need to have classes offered in another program.

Arizona has a clear chance at being in the fore front of future energy policy. I intend to be part of that. Where will the trained managers for natural resource management in the public sector come from? Today they will come the SPAP concentration in Natural Resource Management. This is the only place locally to acquire the training necessary to translate my 30 years in private industry into the skills needed to achieve this.

I can get a business education at many schools. What SPAP offers is NOT available in many places. The competitors to our program are top universities who see the necessity of this training. Frankly, they will not be training people for Arizona public service. They are training people for Washington, Think Tanks and major East and West Coast cities.

I can and have run a business. But I don’t know how to run a nonprofit, how to write a grant, how to work through a political process that is much different from the “politics’ of the private world. The faculty at SPAP do. Research, public sector leadership and Tucson will be the losers if this proposal to
absorb SPAP programs into the business school moves forward.

I am a PhD student in SPAP and after reading the proposal, I have one point to make from a student perspective.

I agree with Dean Portney's statement that public servant training can benefit from a solid training in business skills; that is why I chose to attend UA. I moved to Arizona because I wanted to get an MPA from a program that was based in a Business College, for those same reasons. I also agree with Dean Portney that the training of business students can be greatly enhanced by an understanding of the public and non-profit sectors.

However, I think the Dean's proposal works better in theory than it would in practice; an assessment I am making from my own experience as a student in Eller. I think the benefits of the proposal would be more favorable to business students than to students of public administration. As a student of public administration, I still value business skills and knowledge; but I am much more jaded about how these courses benefit my work in the public and non-profit sectors. There are fundamental differences between the three sectors and it is extremely hard to cover, in one semester, course material in a way that makes it applicable to students from all three sectors.

Many of the courses I take are outside of SPAP and it is a constant struggle to take what I learn from them, and adapt them to the public and non-profit sector. Whether it be methods or theory, the material is either based in research that is done very differently from my research or material is thrown in at the very end of the semester to make it applicable to a more general audience.

SPAP has been the place where I can put my knowledge into a fitting context. I can take all the wonderful knowledge I have gotten from courses across the campus and take it back to SPAP and figure out how it can be applied to the public and non-profit sectors. Without SPAP, I would have business skills and other skills, but I would greatly lack the indepth understanding I have of two sectors that are so important to our lives. I have trouble imagining the same could be accomplished with only a Public Management Track.

The financial analysis in Eller College Dean Paul Portney’s White Paper is deeply flawed:
1. The proposal vastly underestimates the benefits of the program’s closure. The proposal claims closing the school would save the university about $563,000 plus ERE. This estimate does not include the revenues the school brings to the university and counts some of the revenue as savings. $77,500 of these “savings” comes from MPA student fees which pay for a MPA program manager and student aid. This was agreed to in the fee request that was approved by ABOR. SPAP has 55 MPA students who pay $1000 per semester of program fees which amounts to over $110,000 a year of revenue forgone if the school is closed.
2. The proposal does not acknowledge the likely increase in these fees when SPAP moves its MPA degree to the evening in the fall of 2009. Our market analysis of the demand for an MPA that meets the needs of working adults indicates that we can double our student body by moving our program to the evening to serve a much larger market of government and nonprofit employees while retaining our current full time student population. We project that this will increase MPA revenue from student fees to $220,000 per year.
3. The proposal acknowledges but makes little note of the fact that our undergraduates produce differential fees. Juniors and seniors pay $500 per semester ($1000 per year) plus tuition. SPAP has 344 declared majors. If half of our students are juniors and seniors then we produce approximately $170,000 in undergraduate fees.
4. Philanthropic giving is very important to the University of Arizona. The proposal acknowledges that SPAP brings in approximately $190,000 a year in philanthropic giving. He asserts that these donors may still contribute to Eller. The facts are quite different. One donor left his estate specifically for criminal justice (providing an endowment of $1,250,000). This would move to UA South with the criminal justice part of our program under this proposal. In addition, while the proposal lists the savings from eliminating the need for a director’s salary supplement, the school’s largest donor, who contributes a chair, has specifically stated that if the School of Public Administration and Policy is closed, he will cease all giving to the Eller College of Management.
5. Our faculty have averaged $1,061,827 in grants and contracts a year from 1998-2008.

In summary, the Dean’s proposal misstates the savings that accrue from closing the School of Public Administration and Policy. Our program produces at least $470,000 in revenue per year which must be balanced against the $563,000 plus ERE he claims closing the program will save. This doesn’t count the projected $110,000 increase in fees from offering the MPA program in the evening in 2009 or the over $1,000,000 in grants and contracts we have averaged per year. This is a school that makes money for the Eller College and the University of Arizona.