Ph.D. Program in Public Administration and Policy
Download the PhD Program Guide
PROGRAM OBJECTIVES
There is a broad societal need for scholarship in the field of public administration. Indeed, the quality of government services and the perceived legitimacy and stability of government itself are depend on effective systems of management and administration tailored to the demands of the public sector. Knowledge generated through advanced scholarship in the field of public administration assists in understanding the forces that influence the operation of public organizations in democratic societies and how they may be made to be more effective and efficient. Scholars trained in our Ph.D. program in Public Administration may seek careers in public service but most will become contributing members of the academy and will focus their skills on the enduring questions of the field. They will also assist in training new students who are specializing in public administration at the masters degree level and are preparing for leadership positions in the government service.
Faculty members in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at the University of Georgia are uniquely qualified to provide graduate education in Public Administration. We have a substantial number of nationally and internationally recognized scholars in the field. As noted above, the research productivity of the UGA Public Administration faculty is unparalleled.
The objectives of the Ph.D. degree in Public Administration are:
1. to generate knowledge that will contribute to an understanding of the dynamics of Public Administration in democratic societies
2. to prepare scholars in Public Administration for leading careers as researchers and teachers at major universities in the United States and abroad
3. to inform the practice of Public Administration by disseminating knowledge of the field and applying it to problems facing local, state, and federal government organizations and governments in other nations
4. to attract outstanding students from under-represented groups in the United States and from other countries to the University of Georgia to study Public Administration
5. to maintain and expand the reputation of the University of Georgia as a national and international leader in the field of Public Administration
CURRICULUM
The central goal of the Ph.D. program is to prepare graduates to be producers of research in Public Administration and closely related fields.
The curriculum is crafted with several specific objectives in mind. First, it provides an appreciation for the broad range of issues -- economic, institutional, normative, and political -- that surround contemporary Public Administration. Second, it equips students with the research skills that needed to conduct original investigations and analyses on the enduring questions of Public Administration. Finally, it immerses students in the central issues, research traditions, and applied skills of a management specialization of their choice.
Completion of the program will normally require two years of full-time course work beyond the masters degree and one or two years of full-time work on the dissertation. This may take longer depending on field of Ph.D. study, academic background, course load, and dissertation topic. Comprehensive examinations are normally taken at the beginning of the third year of the program, and the remainder of the third year is devoted to the prospectus and dissertation. Completion of the degree requires more time for students who enter without a substantial amount of graduate work in public administration, who take fewer than three courses per semester, or who fail to complete degree requirements in a timely fashion.
FIELDS OF STUDY
Students must prepare for comprehensive examinations in three fields of study. In consultation with his or her advisory committee, each student selects a group of core courses around which the program of study will be constructed. These courses are drawn from the list below. Exemptions may be granted where these courses, or their equivalents, have been taken at the masters level. A minimum of three courses must be selected from each field.
Public Administration Core Field
Management Specialization
Public Policy Field
Methodology Requirement
The fields of study for the Ph.D. program are:
1. Public Administration Core Field
This required field involves intensive coursework in issues of and approaches to the general field of Public Administration, as well as coverage of major subfields, such as public personnel administration, public financial administration, and organization theory. Courses may be selected from the following list:
PADP 6490 Administrative Law
PADP 6910 Public Administration and Democracy
PADP 6920 Public Personnel Administration
PADP 6930 Public Financial Administration
PADP 6960 Organizational Theory
PADP 8710 Ideas and Issues in Public Administration
PADP 8730 Research Seminar in Public Administration
2. Public Policy Field
This required field involves intensive course work in issues of and approaches to the study of public policy generally, as well as in substantive policy areas that are of interest to the student (e.g., environmental policy, law enforcement, public health, and public welfare). Courses associated with this field include the following:
PADP 8670 Policy Analysis I
PADP 8680 Policy Analysis II
PADP 8620 Policy Process
PADP 8630 Policy Implementation
PADP 8640 Program Evaluation
PADP 8650 Public Policy Seminar
PADP 8850 Quantitative Analysis for Public Decision-Making
SOWK 6011 Social Welfare Policy and the Social Work Profession
SOWK 7411 Advanced Policy Analysis
SOWK 7206 Evaluation of Family-Centered Social Work Intervention
SOWK 7106 Evaluation of Community and Institutional Practices
SOWK 8166 Qualitative Methods in Social Work
3. Management Specialization
As a third field of study, each student will develop a specialization in an area of public management. This specialization will involve intensive course work in a particular area such as public budgeting and finance, public organization theory and behavior, public personnel administration, or nonprofit administration. Other specializations are possible with the approval of the director of the Ph.D. program.
For illustrative purposes, the following is a list of fields and courses from which a Ph.D. student, in consultation with the Ph.D. program director, may build a management specialization. The list is not intended to be exhaustive but only illustrative of the options available to Ph.D. students in Public Administration.
Local Government Administration
PADP 7500 Local Government Management
PADP 7520 Urban Policy
PADP 7540 Productivity Improvement in Local Government
PADP 8560 Special Topics in Urban Administration
PADP 8430 Public Financial Management
PADP 7840 Budget Practicum
PADP 8840 Metropolitan Fiscal Problems
POLS 8160 Urban Politics
GEOG 6370 Introduction to Geographic Information Systems
GEOG 6630 Advanced Urban Geography
GEOG 6660 Urban and Regional Development
GEOG 8630 Seminar in Urban Geography
Public Budgeting and Finance
PADP 7840 Budget Practicum
PADP 8430 Public Financial Management
PADP 8830 Seminar in Public Budgeting
PADP 8840 Metropolitan Fiscal Problems
PADP 8850 Quantitative Analysis for Public Decision-Making
FINA 8000 Financial Management
ECON 8010 Microeconomic Theory I
ACCT 7990 Financial Accounting
Public Management
PADP 6960 Organization Theory
PADP 7900 Managing Volunteers in the Public and Nonprofit Sectors
PADP 8460 Organizational Behavior
PADP 8960 Organizational Development and Change
MGMT 7010 Developing Leadership Skills
MGMT 7400 Strategic Management and Communication
MGMT 7580 Management of Nonprofit Organizations
MGMT 7800 Organizational Diagnosis and Intervention
MGMT 7810 Organizational Design and Development
MGMT 8240 Quality Management
MGMT 9020 Concepts of Organizations
MGMT 9400 Strategic Management Theory
MGMT 9500 Strategic Management Research
MGMT 9820 Seminar in Organizational Behavior
PSYC 6200 Advanced Social Psychology
PSYC 6310 Introduction to Industrial Psychology
PSYC 6320 Introduction to Organizational Psychology
PSYC 8720 Group Structure and Process
PSYC 8960 Training and Development
PSYC 8980 Seminar in Industrial-Organizational Psychology
SOCI 6270 Personality and Social Structure
SOCI 6800 Sociology of Work and Industry
SOCI 6850 Sociology of Occupations
SOCI 6950 Sociology of Organizations
Public Personnel Administration
PADP 6490 Administrative Law
PADP 6920 Public Personnel Administration
PADP 7900 Managing Volunteers in the Public and Nonprofit Sectors
PADP 8420 Leadership in Public Sector Organizations
PADP 8720 Seminar in Selected Problems in Public Personnel Administration
MGMT 7010 Developing Leadership Skills
MGMT 9810 Seminar in Human Resource Management
PSYC 6140 Introduction to Industrial-Organizational Psychology
PSYC 6150 Psychometrics Human Services Administration
PADP 7930 Human Services Administration in Government
HPRB 6040 Use of Epidemiologic Data in Health Promotion and Behavior
HPRB 7070 Planning and Evaluation in Health Education and Health Promotion
HPRB 7170 Aging and Health
HPRB 7200 Women in Health and Illness
HPRB 7370 Social Marketing of Health: Theory and Process
HPRB 7700 Analysis and Prevention of Injury and Violence
HPRB 7920 Health Behavior
HPRB 8420 Theory and Research in Health Behavior
HPRB 8430 Intervention and Evaluation of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
MGMT 7580 Management of Nonprofit Organizations
SOWK 6011 Social Welfare Policy and the Social Work Profession
SOWK 7011 Advanced Policy Analysis
SOCI 6650 Sociology of Aging
Methodology Requirement
In addition to the above requirements, Ph.D. students must take three research methods courses. These courses should be taken as early as possible in the program of study and may be selected from the following list:
PADP 7110 Research Methods in Public Administration
PADP 7120 Data Applications in Public Administration
POLS 7040 Quantitative Methods
POLS 7050 Advanced Methods
SOCI 6620 Analysis and Interpretation of Sociological Data I
SOCI 6630 Analysis and Interpretation of Sociological Data II
SOCI 6700 Survey Research Methods
STAT 6210 Statistical Methods I
STAT 6220 Statistical Methods II
STAT 6230 Applied Regression Analysis
STAT 6240 Sampling and Survey Methods
STAT 6280 Applied Time Series Analysis
Other advanced courses in research methods may be substituted for these courses with approval of the Ph.D. program director. Students who have completed the UGA Master of Public Administration (M.P.A.) degree may not take PADP 7110 or PADP 7120 to meet the research requirements.
COMPREHENSIVE WRITTEN EXAMINATION
As a requirement for admissions to Ph.D. candidacy, all students must take and pass written and oral comprehensive examinations on their three fields of study: the public administration core, public policy, and the management specialization. A written examination for each field is administered on three successive Fridays early in the semester. Before the comprehensive examinations are taken, the student should have completed the required courses on the program of study with at least a B average. All incomplete grades must be resolved prior to the comprehensive examinations. Students are not permitted to consult notes, books, photocopies, or any other materials during the examinations.
The design of examination questions is the responsibility of faculty in each field. These faculty members decide what constitutes knowledge of that field and what level of mastery is required to pass the examinations.
Sample Questions
ORAL EXAMINATION
In order to provide a focal point for the oral comprehensive examination, the department requires that all students submit a research paper in advance of the comprehensive examinations. This paper will guide the examination committee during orals in exploring the student's research interests. The research paper may be a new one that the student has prepared especially for purposes of the oral examination, or it may be a substantially revised version of a term paper or other research project. The paper should demonstrate the student's ability to define a problem, develop an argument, introduce materials to support that argument, and draw defensible conclusions that will be of interest to students of public administration. The oral examination will center around this research paper, but the examiners will also explore questions relating to the student's three fields of study. While the design and preparation of the research paper is the student's responsibility, the choice of paper topics is subject to approval by the student's major professor. Normally, the major professor will work with the student in developing the paper. Graduate School rules stipulate that this paper cannot be the dissertation prospectus.
PROSPECTUS AND DISSERTATION
Following successful completion of the written and oral comprehensive examinations, students are admitted to degree candidacy. Thereafter, the process of writing a dissertation begins with the preparation of a prospectus. The prospectus identifies a problem to be explored, draws on relevant literature to show the significance of the problem for public administration, sets forth a line of argumentation to be pursued or hypotheses to be tested, and describes the approach or methods and the data that will be employed in conducting the research. The prospectus, which is written in close consultation with the student's major professor, can often be adapted to serve as the introductory chapter of the dissertation.
After a dissertation has been certified as ready for defense by the student's advisory committee, a final oral examination is scheduled for defense of a dissertation. The advisory committee must then approve a dissertation and the defense with no more than one dissenting vote and must certify their approval in writing.
Once a dissertation has been approved, defended, corrected, and edited as necessary, it is submitted by the student to the Graduate School . Students must be careful to prepare a dissertation in conformity to all Graduate School specifications, as stated in Theses and Dissertations: Student Guide to Preparation and Processing.
SAMPLE PROGRAM OF STUDY
A typical program of study for Ph.D. students in Public Administration could include the following courses:
Public Administration Core Field:
PADP 6910 Public Administration and Democracy 3 hours
PADP 6920 Public Personnel Administration 3 hours
PADP 8710 Ideas and issues in Public Administration 3 hours
Public Policy Field:
PADP 8620 Policy Process 3 hours
PADP 8640 Program Evaluation 3 hours
PADP 8670 Policy Analysis I 3 hours
PADP 8680 Policy Analysis II 3 hours
Management Specialization: Public Finance:
PADP 6930 Public Financial Administration 3 hours
PADP 8430 Public Financial Management 3 hours
PADP 8830 Seminar in Public Budgeting 3 hours
Methodology Requirement:
PADP 7110 Research Methods in Public Administration 3 hours
PADP 7120 Data Applications in Public Administration 3 hours
POLS 7040 Quantitative Methods 3 hours
POLS 7050 Advanced Methods 3 hours
Doctoral Dissertation:
PADP 9300 18 hours
LIBRARY SOURCES
All of the research journals directly related to the field of public administration are available through the library both electronically and in paper copies, including Public Administration Review, The Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, The American Review of Public Administration, The International Journal of Public Administration, Administration and Society, and a variety of specialized journals from subfields of the discipline. Additional resources are available in the Science Library and Law Library.
It is worth noting that the UGA Library is the largest library in the state of Georgia and serves as the Regional Depository for federal government publications for the state of Georgia . It is a member of the prestigious Association of Research Libraries, consisting of the largest research libraries in North America and ranks in top third of these libraries (The University of Georgia, Graduate Bulletin 2000-2001, p. 48). The Main Library, Law Library, and Science Library collectively contain more than 3,500,000 books, serials, and documents.
DEADLINES
Departmental application deadlines coincide with Graduate School deadlines. |
