Give Public Administration Careers a Chance

The phrase “public administrator” probably conjures in your mind a caricature of a lazy, ineffectual bureaucrat content to push paper across his or her desk from here to kingdom come. “Public administration,” on the other hand, may well bring to mind the worst stereotypes of corrupt or bloated government agencies. On behalf of the millions of hard-working public administrators who keep the nation’s clocks running, so to speak, it’s time to drop these outdated notions. Not only is public administration a noble calling to which educated professionals can aspire, it’s also one of the fastest-growing career choices in the country today.

Popular Public Administration Careers

Not everyone who works in public administration is a government employee. In fact, as state and local agencies outsource many administrative functions that were previously performed in-house, the private sector now has a hand in creating the bulk of new public administration jobs. Promising careers in this broad field include:

• Legislation and governance. State and federal legislatures can’t function without the efforts of behind-the-scene support staff like legislative aides, lobbyists, and clerks. The labyrinthine city hall complexes of the nation’s bigger cities probably couldn’t, either.
• Revenue and record-keeping. As a kid, you probably never dreamed of being a tax collector or auditor when you grew up, but there are worse things in life. Holding positions like these, with hard-to-shake negative connotations, is the perfect opportunity to fight the worst stereotypes about public administration.
• Aid and development. Then there are the public administration jobs that don’t need any help from boosters like you. As a grant writer or financial aid coordinator, you’ll be responsible for changing the lives of college-bound underprivileged kids and breathing new life into struggling non-profits.

Preparing for a Public Administration Career

Beyond entry-level and temporary positions, most public administration jobs require at least an associate’s degree, and bachelor’s degrees are becoming more common. One major exception is the armed forces, which is technically a public administration organization.

Once you decide to go into public administration, you’ll need to choose a career track sooner rather than later.

• Associate’s degree. Most community colleges now offer two-year degrees in public administration and related fields like healthcare administration and political science. This degree qualifies you for entry-level jobs that don’t require specialized skills.
• Bachelor’s degree. Public administration is one of the hottest majors at many four-year colleges, especially the main-campus state universities that serve as feeders for state and local government workers. You’ll be even more attractive to prospective employers with a dual political science-public administration degree.
• Advanced degree. You’ll never guess what many politically-focused graduate schools offer: a public administration master’s degree. Armed with one of these, especially if it’s paired with the sort of applied-science bachelor’s degree that would make you a perfect fit at federal bureaucracies like NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency.

If you’re like most aspiring young public administration careerists, you’re likely hoping to have an illustrious career filled with sweeping policy changes and a radical re-imagining of what it’s possible for government to achieve. In reality, you’re more likely to be making incremental improvements to a woefully outdated system of service delivery and a shrill, unnecessarily partisan political climate. This may be more important in the long run, though: A nation can’t dream big if the folks charged with its upkeep can’t agree on anything.

Alex Yang writes for several higher ed blogs. To read more about degrees in public administration click here.