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CZECH REPUBLIC |
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CZECH REPUBLIC |
CONCLUSIONS
Public administration education has a limited tradition in the Czech Republic. After the Second World War, programmes and courses were limited, and this only began to change in the 1980s when the first accredited public administration programmes were established in Prague, Brno and Ostrava.
The historical gap and the related lack of highly qualified public servants made public administration an attractive field of studies to universities (but, at first, not to students) and several programmes were created in the early 1990s. Public administration studies generally came about in schools of economics, but also in two specialised universities of economics and administration and several different faculties. Because of the labour market, only one faculty of law (Plzen) opened a bachelor’s programme in public administration.
Public administration education in the Czech Republic is predominantly based on the economics and management disciplines, which is advantageous for graduates when entering the labour market as they are employable in both the private and public sectors. This is important because the demand from the civil service for PA graduates is lower than expected. This trend is not likely to change as a number of under-qualified public servants participate in part-time public administration programmes in order to remain in their positions.
According to the government decree on public administration education, the network of schools providing public administration-related education is, in principle, complete, and it is not expected that new programmes will “enter the market,” especially with regards to master’s courses. Furthermore, this network is territorially diverse and includes institutions in all geographic regions of the Czech Republic.
Cooperation between universities and the central government is improving, which is partially related to the fact that many university representatives were appointed to senior civil service positions.
Lastly, the degree of “Europeanisation” of public administration programmes in the country is very high, especially in the most important centres, which provide numerous comprehensive courses in this field. This, in turn, will assist the Czech Republic in its efforts to join the European Union.
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