From potholes to public policy, from the condition of schools to the condition of civil society--how we cope with the complexities of modern life matters because it determines the quality of life that we share as a community. One way of coping would be to have so much money that all those other people do the coping instead, which suggests that studying economics or finance would make sense; however, the attraction of corporate gamesmanship is limited. Another way, perhaps, would be to get into politics--though frankly it is difficult to see how studying, say, political science can guarantee the possibility of making a positive difference in the shape of our communities in a poisonous political environment.
The concept of public administration, however, carries with it a sense of public service as well as the idea of being effective at making the complex more simple, the conflicts connected to public policy less strained, the community more livable. To me, the idea of public administration is also an idea about understanding how the institutions that touch all of us operate--whether civil, political, corporate, or cultural--and how to participate in making them operate in beneficial ways. The more people these institutions benefit, the better off more people are and the more livable their lives are. To be a part of creating such benefits--perhaps, in time, even to manage the creative efforts of strong teams of colleagues--is a goal of mine, and the study of public administration seems to me to be a discipline that can best prepare me to achieve that goal.
Anybody who has been frustrated with (or hostile to) bureaucracies that are both impersonal and ineffective wants to understand the work of public administration, whether he knows it or not, as well as the people who are meant to make public administration work. The information about public administration as an academic discipline that I have gained tells me that it can be challe...