PREFACE In 1914, Mayor John Purroy Mitchel, acting on the recommendation of the committee of the American Political Science Association charged with the duty of studying the problem of training for public service, invited the universities and colleges of the country to send representatives to a conference in the City of New York. At this convention the broad aspects of the question suggested by the Association were discussed at great length by competent educational authorities and men of affairs. It was found that universities were ready to do their share in the work of placing education for public service on the high plane which its importance demands. However, the one point brought out at the conference with such emphasis that it could not be overlooked, was that the time had come for a scientific study of the civil service with a view to discovering the precise nature of the problem presented to institutions of learning desiring to co-operate in training public servants. The necessity for such an investigation made it imperative that some responsible authority should undertake it immediately. It was accordingly suggested that the College of the City of New York, owing to its unique relations with the largest municipality in the country, was best fitted to conduct a survey of the field and set forth the elements of the educational problem involved. Several institutions took up the challenge of the conference', and on March 6, 1915, President Mezes of the College of the City of New York appointed a committee on municipal service survey to report on the opportunities and obligations of the College in the matter of training students for entrance to the public service and improving the efficiency of those already in the service. The report was prepared for the committee by Professor Frederick E. Breithut, after a thorough and painstaking investigation. 1A "Report on Training for Public Service" was made to the President of Columbia University, in March, 1915. For other developments see "School and Society" for December 25, 1915, p. 905. Although this report is directed to the problems peculiar to the City College and the City of New York, the conclusions reached, the recommendations advanced, the standards of measurement and procedure set up, and the analyses of the civil service presented1 are of such fundamental value to all other institutions of learning in the country confronted by similar problems that it is deemed advisable to give the document a wider circulation than it could receive as a municipal publication designed only for the authorities of the College and the officers of the City. For this reason, the body of the report is herewith republished as a Bulletin of the Bureau of Municipal Research. An introduction to the general theme is added by the Supervisor of the Training School for Public Service conducted in connection with the Bureau. It should be noted that the schedules of the New York civil service used in this report are those at present in existence, not the new specifications submitted by the Bureau of Standards for the standardization of salaries and grades. THE PROBLEM OF TRAINING FOR PUBLIC SERVICE I There is now in existence a considerable literature on training for public service, but most of it is general in character. Those who have written upon the subject have been concerned primarily with interesting educational authorities or the public at large in the need for such training. On such aspects of the question many wise and pertinent things have been said. The time has come, however, to consider very narrowly and critically all of the questions involved in actually organizing the work of training for public service. Obviously this new undertaking differs from all other educational enterprises. Establishing a law, engineering or business school is a relatively simple matter as compared with solving the problems of a school for public service. The Public Service Calls for Many Kinds of Special Training In the first place, the courses of instruction for the older schools are easily sketched. Whatever may be the differences over details, there are certain fundamentals in each which are easily agreed upon as essential to the requirements of the respective professions. Public service, on the other hand, is not a single profession. It calls for persons trained in all professions, and possessing such diverse qualifications and talents that there can be no common education for all divisions of the service although there is undoubtedly a highly desirable type of training in administrative science which should be superimposed upon each of the various special disciplines. An examination of the table on page 31 shows that the public service includes all other professions and callings: engineers of all varieties, doctors, lawyers, teachers, chaplains, purchasing agents, managers of office and labor forces, organizers of great undertakings, and operators of vast public works enterprises, to say nothing of the minor employments. Clearly an independent training school for public service which undertakes to cover the whole field of official administration must necessarily be as broad in its scope as the greatest university in the country. It is therefore erroneous to speak of training for public service as a distinct discipline like law, medicine, engineering or accounting. The public service embraces scores of different types of positions for each of which there are special and local requirements. A school that undertook to give its students a general course in "public service" and then turned them loose, on the assumption that they could somehow find their way into public employment, would soon be destroyed by its disappointed alumni. Difficulties in Passing from the School to the Public Service A training school for the official public service also differs from the older professional schools in the relation of its graduates to their life work. The young lawyer or doctor can begin practice the next morning after the completion of the legal requirements. It is true that he may have many weary months of waiting for clients or patients, but if he is not able to finance himself in this period he may readily find a paying apprenticeship with some established practitioner. The graduate from a training school for public service, on the other hand, may be compelled to wait for six months or a year or even two years before the public examination for the desired vacancy is held. This fact makes imperative a link between the schools and the public service which will permit of laboratory or practical experience until the desired vacancy opens. 1 In New York City, 371 different types of service. II Inasmuch as training for public service really involves the adjustment of the curricula in various branches of a comprehensive educational system to the numerous specialties of the civil service, it must be clear to the most superficial thinker that an accurate survey of the whole service for which the training is intended is indispensable to a solution of the problem. To dwell upon this point would be to reinforce the obvious. And yet, in spite of this fact, several years of talk about training for public service have not produced until the present time an exhaustive survey of any branch of public administration. It is to supply this information to those interested in the realities of training for the municipal service of New York, that this bulletin is published. Information Necessary to the Organization of In order that institutions concerned in the solution of the problem may see clearly the multifarious ways that lead into the municipal service, it is necessary to have information concerning the following: 1-The functional classes of service and the number of positions in each class. 2-The number of annual appointments to each class as a basis for estimating the probable opportunities opening each year. 3-The number of positions which call for more than the average high school training as a foundation. 4-The qualifications prescribed for entrance into the several classes of the service. 5-The lines of promotion in the several classes of the service as a basis for arranging special instruction for those already in public employment. |