Do Policy Schools Still Have a Point?
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/09/08/do-policy-schools-still-have-a-point/
Harvard’s Stephen Walt:
Despite local variations, these programs all assume there is a body of academic knowledge that can help would-be public leaders understand the world in which they are operating and devise effective solutions to current and future public problems. And implicit in that assumption is the further belief that knowledge derived from past human experience will remain accurate and relevant for the new issues that will be coming down the pike. In short, the faculty who construct these programs typically think they have discovered enduring laws of human behavior (e.g., “supply and demand,” “the balance of power,” “collective goods theory,” etc.) that will continue to operate in the future much as they have done in the past. They also think that exposing students to past cases where leaders had to address some complex problem will provide lessons that will come in handy in the students’ future careers. Learn these tools and absorb these cases, and you’ll be ready for anything.
Or so we tend to think, but I wonder. What if we have entered a world that is being transformed in ways that make today’s knowledge less useful or relevant?
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/09/08/do-policy-schools-still-have-a-point/
Harvard’s Stephen Walt:
Despite local variations, these programs all assume there is a body of academic knowledge that can help would-be public leaders understand the world in which they are operating and devise effective solutions to current and future public problems. And implicit in that assumption is the further belief that knowledge derived from past human experience will remain accurate and relevant for the new issues that will be coming down the pike. In short, the faculty who construct these programs typically think they have discovered enduring laws of human behavior (e.g., “supply and demand,” “the balance of power,” “collective goods theory,” etc.) that will continue to operate in the future much as they have done in the past. They also think that exposing students to past cases where leaders had to address some complex problem will provide lessons that will come in handy in the students’ future careers. Learn these tools and absorb these cases, and you’ll be ready for anything.
Or so we tend to think, but I wonder. What if we have entered a world that is being transformed in ways that make today’s knowledge less useful or relevant?