Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 25th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview VII. Public Administration Education Author(s) Olga Filatova Peoples Friendship University of Russia Moscow Russian Federation Semenov Sergey, Title Problems and Mechanism of Adaptation of Academic Programs in Public Administration to the Objectives of the Practice-oriented Education File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Olga Filatova Abstract The graduates of the Public Administration (PA) programs have a problem which is actual for other directions but is more evident for them because of the specificities of their future work. After classical academic programs at the university they need to solve practical problems of the organization of management of complex socio-economic systems in many directions. Each of them implies its own narrow professional skills (in sociology, economics, ecology, urban planning, engineering infrastructure, policy and other fields). Here it is important to mention that the object and subject of the narrow specialist are the intrasystem elements of the object of the specialist in PA. At the same time it is evident that competence of the specialist in public administration can’t be the sum of competences of narrow specialists (intrasystem elements) but they must correlate with them. Considering the same period of study of the specialists of all named fields it is reasonable to think that the specialists in PA come to their work less prepared. After some time they receive practice-oriented additional education, but it is not the solution of the problem, it is the tentative to mitigate its negative consequences. Contradictions between the traditional academic disciplinary approach and the objectives of the practice-oriented education, implying the skills of working with real objects are widely discussed. It is difficult to restructure classical academic programs to make them practice-oriented for a number of reasons. One of them is the absence of organizational and structural mechanism of integration of academic disciplines, another is conservatism and inertness of the university environment. We would like to pay attention on the opportunity of the improvement of the quality of education in PA with the help of organizational and structural changes in the education process. The changes focus to bridge the gap between the objectives of practice-oriented education and classical university education. S. Semenov raises this problem in the article dedicated to organization and conception of practice-oriented programs, where he analyses the experience of realization of project object-oriented education. [1] For more complete understanding of the opportunities of creating the mechanism of adaptation of academic programs we use comparative analysis of the experience and opportunities of different universities, realizing programs in PA. In the research we analyze problems of implementation of practice-oriented elements in classical academic programs and the mechanisms of realization of such educational projects. Through the example of realization of practice-oriented education programs in Russian and foreign universities we show that there are different ways of adaptation of academic programs to the practice-oriented objectives in PA education and that the integration is possible with the use of the interdisciplinary project approach. On the basis of the analysis of the experience and the problems of realization of practice-oriented programs we propose the mechanism of overcoming the contradictions between the practice-oriented education and the specific of the university environment and classical disciplinary education. We also show the directions and possibilities of profiling on last stages of bachelor and master degree programs in PA. [1] Semenov S.A. Praktiko-orientirovannoye obucheniye v sfere gosudarstvennogo I munitsipalnogo upravleniya // Vestnik RUDN, Seriya “Gosudarstvennoye i munitsipalnoye upravleniye”, 2015, №1, S. 68-81.
