Evening star., 1937-02-25
PUBLIC SERVICE
COURSE MAPPED
Harvard to Call on U. S.
Officials to Advise Admin
istration School.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass, February 70
(NA.N.A).-"We ought not encour-
age q man to 60 into public service
without a private profession. He
should have a backlog so he wont
have to sublet his conscience to holo
his job"
Prof. William B. Munro was talking
about the problem he has taken on
to organize the start of Harvard's plo-
ueer venture with q school OF public
administration.
1T Is no secret" Prof. Munor said,
''that SO far nobody in the United
States knows how to train men for
public service. Harvard proposes to
find out. We are going to spend a
year and a half and a lot of money
to find out. The Rockefeller founda-
ton has provided 5000 for our pre-
liminary exploration. So far, when a
college has decided to teach public
administration, it has just said. we
will teach this and that AnC public
officials have said, oh, yeah?'
First and last we shall bring as
many as $50 officials here to help US
develop our courses. They will come
@ few at a time to stay a week or
two at a time, to go over our outlines
and tell us what is wrong with them.
They will stay around and talk it over
with US and with each other.
First of Conferences.
For the first group of conferences
In March we shall have perhaps an
assistant secretary in the Interior De-
partment, an Ohio mayor. an Okla
homa school superintendent, budget
expert from the State House in
Boston"
It Is to be q thoroughly practical
training for Government service, the
new schools sponsors insist. They
expect their men to get jobs-and
good jobs-in Government. They are
trying to establish such a practical
school that its graduates can't help
getting the good jobs and getting on
fast in the jobs. 1t is going to be
about the hardest school in America
to get into during its early years be-
cause of the selective standards for
admission.
No students are to be accepted at
all for the year and half that Prof
Munro and his associates will spend
asking practical men in Government
to tell them what to teach and how to
train the kind of men for whom Gov
ernment will offer the highest de-
mand.
Prof. Munro wrote the report of
the commission that has just told
Harvard how to spend the S2,000,000
gift of Lucius N. Littauer for i'll
struction for public service.
When Prof. Munro takes his pipe
out of his mouth he talks like bank
director. AS a matter of fact, he is
q bank director. He is also men,
ber of the Executive Council Of the
California Institute of Technology.
Demand for His Books.
Prot. Munro has been so practical
q man in his own treatment of Gov
ernment that his publishers have sold
more than 100000 worth of his
text books on "the Government of the
United States" which more than TO-
900 students study every year. Text
book writing has been his backlog. He
put his dependency upon a profess
sorship behind him q long time ago.
When he was young man he de-
ternlined to retire at S., to go on
half-time at As. He carried out this
program.
Prof. Munro expects to have the
school start very small and grow at
frst very slowly. Harvard can afford
to wait, he says. So not more than so
men will be accepted to work in
groups of a dozen or less, when the
school opens In October, 1888.
This is not just Harvard ven-
ture," he said. If Harvard can find
q basis for such training it will be
useful all over, as the Harvard Law
School case method has been of serv-
Ice to legal education all over the
land. There is no patent on anything
q university works out"
(copyright, 1887. by the North American
Newspaper Alliance, 1ncJ