By now, most all of us have heard the news that through a $100 million gift from Frank McCourt (C ’75), Georgetown will launch the McCourt School of Public Policy.
Establishing a new school is a rare event at any university. A moment like this last occurred at Georgetown in 1957.
What does it mean about the progress of human knowledge? What does it mean about the public roles of universities? What will it mean for Georgetown?
Of the approximately 3000 colleges and universities in the U.S., a few hundred have public policy schools. A little known fact is that one of the first, if not the very first, was started in Washington in 1924 at the new Brookings Institution, then called the Institute for Government Research, which started a graduate program for the education of professional public administrators (later abandoned). Thus, the idea of public policy as an academic domain started in the 20th century. It’s a relatively new field, in the vast expanse of the history of human knowledge.
There appear to be two flavors of the cultures of these schools — a focus on training the next generation of professionals in public administration and institutional management, on one hand, and the academic study of the process of public policy formation, the efficacy of programs, and the root causes of social issues, on the other.
As with many young-ish fields, the faculty of policy schools have their PhD degrees from diverse disciplines. In most, one would typically find economists, political scientists, sociologists, legal scholars, education researchers, and others. Increasingly, PhDs from policy studies programs are entering the faculty ranks of these schools; this will no doubt form a new era of these schools, with faculty with formal training in the full field itself.
Policy schools on most campuses are one of the more visible contributors to the public role of universities. They generate research results that help the citizenry assess the current activities of the government officials they elect. They highlight social issues in need of policy attention. They teach the society about alternative courses of action for key issues it faces.
To be effective in their public role, public policy schools must be objective and fact-based. The faculty of GPPI have been major contributors to assessments of public programs through sophisticated empirical analyses of data and the mounting of social experiments assessing alternative ways to improve the human condition. Georgetown, with its Washington location, has a real edge in this domain of policy school activities. We have already demonstrated our ability to shine a light on critical issues, to critically review alternative ways forward on issues of education, health care, and income inequality, as well as others. The McCourt School launches from a position of strength.
Of the various domains of research and education that exist on university campuses, those schools that have interdisciplinary foci tend to integrate more organically into the life of the full institution. They tend to attract faculty who have interests that span school boundaries and who want joint appointments. Their scholars get their energy from confronting alternative conceptual frameworks for a given issue. They thrive on challenges to their own point of view. The best of them create a cadre of collaborators from different disciplines. They understand fully the excitement of putting multiple sets of knowledge together to form a new approach to a problem.
For these reasons, effective policy schools build open intellectual environments, encouraging eclectic intellectual approaches. They bring others into their work. When this happens, the benefits of a policy school to the university go far beyond those of one school with its faculty and students. The school can strengthen the entire institution through new internal faculty networks and new integrative research teams.
At this founding moment, the McCourt School holds this promise for all of us at Georgetown.
This is great news and a great time! GPPI has conducted very valuable research in the areas of health, labor, education, and social policies, as well as increasingly in development policy, publishing well-researched and thoughtful policy proposals. Now, MSPP can do much more with this gift including in the area of information management for public policy and the use and analysis of big data, as well the relationship between policy and politics, which are very timely. Several additional comments and suggestions are in order.
1. In view of the current budget fiasco, the School should strengthen its capabilities and offerings in the field of Public Finance and Fiscal Policy. It already has Prof. Alice Rivlin, a former OMB chief and thoughtful expert as a Visiting Professor. However, one faculty member is not enough in this critical field.
2. As an urban school, MSPP should strengthen its capabilities and course offerings in Urban and Metropolitan Policy and Governance like most other urban policy schools. The University does a lot of good work at the grass-root level especially in Ward 7, but this is not always visible to civic and local government leaders. In order to thrive and have more local support the University must also engage the city government and provide it with advice to overcome city problems. Two or three additional faculty members in such fields as urban policy, urban governance and management, and urban and regional economics and development (the latter with a joint appointment with the Economics Department), who would research urban and metropolitan problems, come up with solutions and engage D.C and area local governments, would really show that GU has a truly positive local impact. One can also imagine a professor in state and local government teaching both undergrad and graduate courses in the Government Department with a joint appointment in MSPP.
3. MSPP also has an opportunity to strengthen its faculty and course offerings in non-profit management, as Washington is the national Mecca for NGOs and many graduates go on to work for them.
4. It is surprising that at the undergraduate level very few if any domestic public policy courses are offered (I think one is offered by the Government Dept. in the College). Perhaps, a small portion of the gift money could be used to offer a few additional public policy and public management/administration undergraduate courses by the Government Dept. and open to students from all schools. I think such courses would be very popular with students many of whom are attracted to GU because of its policy orientation and are considering careers in the public service.
5. Policy-making is important but without attention given to policy implementation and management it does have the desired effect.
6. MSPP faculty may produce excellent evidence-based and thoughtful policy papers and even share them with government officials and members of Congress, in such critical areas as health policy, social policy or fiscal policy. However, unless they reach and convice the public with their findings and policy recommendations, they may not have the desired impact on policy.
Thank you to Mr. McCourt! His generosity is stunning. The opening of this school will mean great things for Georgetown.
That’s wonderful news! Two ideas for the revisioning that might be particularly suitable for launch in the McCourt School:
A. Scale offerings: Some Georgetown faculty have top expertise in niche fields. Imagine if that expertise was “scaled” across students affiliated with other universities. In fact, Georgetown could take the lead in pulling together the top experts from a set of universities in a field, and combine them to offer the country’s BEST program in those specific areas (which would be particularly suitable for grad or certificate programs and perfect for public policy). The program could then be delivered across each of the partner universities with some combo of in person and video/tech delivery. Georgetown would effectively expand its student footprint without requiring more classrooms or admitting more students, allow faculty to dive even deeper in their area of expertise, earn a share of tuition from other school’s students, and import faculty talent to our programs where we don’t have the top experts.
B. Redesigned Compensation for Non-Tenure Line (NTL) Faculty. To the extent that NTL faculty are self-funding (e.g.some NTLs fund their positions through sponsored research, or other revenue-based activities), then the NTL professorship could be a key vehicle for Georgetown’s strategic plan and financial trajectory. Specifically, the NTL position could be the vehicle for faculty choosing to shift more to a productivity-based pay model, where compensation is dependent in part on the level of funds the position brings into the university for university use. Here’s how it might work: some NTL faculty could agree to a compensation model that allows for productivity pay, such that increased revenue bearing activities (be those research, expanded certificate programs, fees for tools, services, or speaking opportunities, contracting, consulting, etc.) would yield some level of increased compensation for the responsible NTL faculty member. These kinds of incentives would be the ultimate win-wn, as both NTL faculty and the university would benefit from the resulting growth.
If such a structure was allowed to grow and thrive at Georgetown through the NTL position, then 4 things might happen:
1. The most productive NTL faculty could see pay increases
2. Georgetown’s revenues would grow as NTL faculty had incentives to bring in more work in through the university and expand programs
3. Some tenure line faculty might see the advantages of the NTL approach and be motivated to shift over the NTL status in order to participate. In the current model, many faculty earn additional revenue in their non-Gtown activities, and these new incentives might encourage them to bring more of this work in through the university.
4. With this model, Georgetown might attract some of the best NTL faculty in the world… specifically those who are looking for a host university who understands both their intellectual value and their capacity to build and expand programs that bring revenues to a university.
Margaret,
You have bought into the corporate model of the university not the instructional model. We need to increase the number of tenure lines not “enhance” the NTL model. You are thinking only in short term ways and not about is good for the academy in the long run.