Ontwikkeling van Publieke Administrasie as studievak en as professie

Abstract

In this inaugural lecture the factors which militated against the more forceful development of the University teaching of Public Administration in South Africa are dealt with in a general manner. These factors can be summarised as follows; viz. Public Administration is still a relatively young academic subject and had to be weaned from Political Science which in certain respects proved to be a rather jealous and possessive parent, the senior members of the university senate and faculty boards are not always favourably disposed towards educational developments which tend to become too practical to their liking, the university lecturers on the one hand and the practitioners on the other are sometimes driven apart as a result of the conflict between theory and practice, the adherence to outdated educa tional methods by the academicians as well as the practitioners prevents the adoption of training practices to meet the demands of changed situations, the field of the practitioner offers much more attractive careers than the universities, the development of sophisticated Public Administration terminology must still take place, the influx of large numbers of professional and technical officials to the public sector focused attention on the other sciences to the detriment of Public Administration, and progress with research in contemporary Public Administration is seriously hampered by the ten- dency on the part of public authorities to over-emphasise the confidential nature of their files. In the lecture attention is also devoted to the delayed development of the profession of Public Administration. The militating factors in this respect are the practice which has been in force since 1910 to regard the Matriculation Certificate as the basic qualification for administrative posts in the public sector, the favourable promotion opportunities which persons with the minimum prescribed qualifications have enjoyed because of the manpower shortages, the failure to emphasise relevancy of qualifications for administrative posts, the tendency to describe administrative officials as generalists without specific skills, the influx of the professional and technical officials to the 12 public sector which during recent years has led to the fragmentation of the objectives and fields of activities of public institutions resulting in the administrative officials who have to provide leadership losing their hold on the administrative process, man-power shortages which have brought in their train tendencies to lower educational requirements for administrative officials while the trend in other professions is to raise the standards of university education required of practitioners, and, finally, the tendency in modern society to belittle administrative leaders. Brief reference is also made in the lecture to the development of Public Administration as an integrating science and to the search for principles which will stand the test of time.