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ESTONIA |
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ESTONIA |
POSITIONING ACADEMIC PROGRAMMES IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN RELATION TO THE DISCIPLINES TO WHICH THEY ARE MOST CLOSELY RELATED
All countries have problems in matching the output of the education system with the manpower needs of the economy. Targeting a particular occupation is becoming increasingly difficult, as a number of occupations are emerging and current needs are changing rapidly. This affects small states, such as Estonia with its population of one and a half million people, to an even greater extent because their labour pools are smaller and, thus, it is inevitably more difficult to match people with jobs. Bacchus and Brock (1987, 9) claimed in their study of educational development in the Commonwealth states that a curriculum based on specific knowledge and skills may be desirable in large countries to produce specialists in various fields. In a small concentrated economy, however, it is not appropriate to focus the curriculum on one or two areas. Small systems tend to be open and flexible and, therefore, a broadly based curriculum is desirable, and the direct application of specific skills is problematic in the long term.
Small states need most of the basic types of specialist personnel required in large states, but they need them in smaller numbers. The small scale of a system requires administrators to fill and perform multiple roles and duties. Certainly a degree of multi-functionalism is also required of officials in medium-sized and large civil services. However, according to Bray (1991a, 513), multi-functionalism becomes more important as the scale diminishes.
In Estonia, undergraduate PA programmes can be divided into two broad groups on the basis of their disciplinary foundations. The first undergraduate programmes were established on an interdisciplinary basis with curricula heavily focused on the social sciences (University of Tartu, Tallinn University of Educational Sciences). Both PA programmes form an integral part of the general social science faculties by strongly emphasising interdisciplinarity.
The second group of PA programmes bases the PA curricula on economics and business studies (Tallinn Technical University, the Estonian Business School). The foundations of such curricula can be found in existing competencies of these universities, which were used in the development of PA curricula. Brief summaries of these programmes can be found in the following sections.
1. University of Tartu
The public administration programme of the University of Tartu was developed based on Estonia needs and the experience of foreign universities teaching PA. The most solid courses in the PA curriculum, fitting local needs, were designed by consulting scholars from England, Finland, Germany, Holland and the USA. The curriculum is one of the most interdisciplinary in the university, and other departments of social sciences have used it as a model to develop their programmes. The dominant discipline is public administration itself, integrated with other disciplines including compulsory courses in law, state philosophy, economics, political science, sociology, psychology and the European Union. The PA programme at the University of Tartu cooperates closely with the departments of law and economics.
2. Tallinn University of Educational Sciences
The PA programme is clearly based on general social sciences with sociology, psychology and political science being mandatory courses. Languages also form part of the compulsory curriculum. The joint programme between the Tallinn University of Educational Sciences and Tallinn Technical University used the curricula of British universities as a model. From the beginning, it was agreed that the Tallinn University of Educational Sciences would cover the fields of social sciences and more specific PA courses in the curriculum. Law and economics play a smaller role in the curriculum than in Tartu, as there are no relevant departments in the Tallinn University of Educational Sciences. The dominant disciplines are based on social sciences.
3. Tallinn Technical University
Originally Tallinn Technical University’s PA programme was designed to be interdisciplinary. In the current curriculum, however, the relative weight of courses in economics, business and management is remarkable, and the PA programme itself strongly relies on cooperation with the Faculty of Economics. In the division of labour with the Tallinn University of Educational Sciences, Tallinn Technical University provides courses in economics, mathematics and information technology. As the PA programme is part of the Faculty of Humanities, however, several other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences are also included in curriculum.
4. Estonian Business School
It is too early to make broader generalisations about the PA curriculum in the Estonian Business School, as it was only introduced in 1998. The ambitious goal of the PA programme is to develop a broad interdisciplinary university-like curriculum including courses in law, the social sciences, philosophy and the European Union. The in-house competence of the Estonian Business School, however, lies in the disciplines of economics, business and management, which are likely to dominate.
5. Dominant Disciplines and Elective Courses
As PA programmes in all universities are new, the dominant disciplines that affected their establishment are still the same. It would be very difficult to achieve a major change in the balance of dominant disciplines, as this would require new (and currently non-existent) competencies, which would need to depend on the development of future faculty members, a process which would take years. All PA curricula involve governance issues oriented towards professional practice. It has been difficult to hire economics and law instructors who can analyse PA issues from their disciplinary perspectives. However, gradually courses in other disciplines (e.g., economics, law, statistics, the European Union, informatics, demography, regional development) have integrated specific PA issues, although the situation varies from university to university.
From 1994 to 1999, PA programs have developed substantially. The PA programme at the University of Tartu has developed seventy-three new PA courses, and Tallinn Technical University and the Tallinn University of Educational Sciences have introduced twenty-five new courses. PA curricula have been regularly reviewed, and as a result several new courses have been added, while a few courses have been replaced. This is common in all universities, although it must be emphasised that the general curricula have remained the same.
The content of courses with similar titles may differ greatly, however, making it difficult to carry out content analysis between universities. Faculty members in all universities have the freedom to build their own courses, and they often use different sources for preparing courses based on their own disciplinary backgrounds and professional experience.
The positioning of academic PA programmes in relation to other disciplines does not depend only on the contents of the PA curricula but is strongly influenced by the degree of the students’ ability to choose elective courses as outlined in Table 2.
Table 2. Ratio of Compulsory and Elective Courses in Estonian PA Programmes(Bachelor’s level, 1 credit point = 16 hours of lectures + 24 hours of independent work)
Institution
Compulsory Courses
Elective Courses
Total
University of Tartu
72 CP
88 CP
160 CP
Tallinn Technical
University122 CP
38 CP
160 CP
Tallinn University of
Educational Sciences107 CP
53 CP
160 CP
Estonian Business
School152 CP
8 CP
160 CP
The number of elective courses in PA differs substantially between the four universities. Basically, two different approaches are used. Tallinn Technical University, the Tallinn University of Educational Sciences and the Estonian Business School include different disciplines in their core curricula while leaving a smaller number of electives. This may be due to a technological bias in Tallinn Technical University, a limited social science base in the Tallinn University of Educational Sciences, and a high degree of specialisation in business studies in the Estonian Business School. These scenarios leave little room for broader curriculum development by involving different disciplines as modules or minor fields of study.
The University of Tartu offers a strong core of fundamental PA courses, while several PA sub-fields and other disciplines can be studied through elective courses and minor fields of study. The difference between these approaches to elective courses is largely due to the greater number of disciplinary choices that students of the University of Tartu have. The large number of electives provides students with the opportunity to specialise in different sub-fields of public administration. Students may develop individual tailor-made curricula for cross-disciplinary fields such as public finance, public law, health management, education management, labour policy and administration, the European Union, environmental management and sports management, among others.
Three different approaches can be identified with regards to the contents of elective courses. Two universities developed a remarkable number of PA elective courses between 1994 and 1999:the University of Tartu offers fifty-two PA elective courses, and the Tallinn University of Educational Sciences offers twenty-six. Tallinn Technical University offers only thirteen elective courses. The Estonian Business School has been actively building up a compulsory curriculum, and to date the development of elective courses has been of secondary concern.
All in all, the dominant approach to the development and delivery of PA programmes in Estonia is interdisciplinary. Although all institutions teaching PA emphasise an integrated approach to the field of PA, in actuality the degree of interdisciplinarity varies from one university to another. However, the goal of all the PA programmes is clearly to integrate PA studies and other disciplines to a larger degree.
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