The DPA: Perspectives on its past and present

This essay examines the origins, development and current issues involving U.S. doctoral education in public administration by focusing particularly upon the DPA degree-—the first doctorate offered in the field. The article argues that the growth of the DPA coincided with the rapidly expanding needs for professionals in governmnt and the growth of American higher education in the postwar era. As a result, early DPA education contained a significant “professionalixing component” in its course work and dissertation research. The sharp public reactions against government professionals and professionalism in the late 1970s and 1980s combined with a new scientific research emphasis for doctoral education stressed by NASPAA's Comprehensive Schools Section, October 20, 1981, called into question the older professional assumptions upon which the DPA was created as a degree program. These trends now raise fundamental intellectual issues regarding its future and serve to fragment the once cohesive programmatic orientation of PA doctoral education today.