Abstract
How do intellectual leaders of professional schools of international affairs, whose institutions primarily educate and train master's students for careers in government, the non-governmental sector, and the private sector, differ from academic administrators in disciplinary departments, whose primary raison d’être is producing the next generation of scholars whose primary task is to conduct basic research, in terms of how they see the academic enterprise and their expectations of faculty research and writing? The results of our recent survey of deans of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA), the leading professional body for international relations-oriented policy schools, and chairs of Top-50 political science departments, reveal some predictable differences but also some surprising overlap. Specifically, we find a clear convergence between disciplinary departments and APSIA schools on the core requirements for promotion and tenure: Peer-reviewed publications in high-impact scholarly journals and leading university presses. But rather than relax demands for other activities by their faculty as they hold them to the expectations of their disciplines, APSIA deans still expect significant policy and broader public engagement from them. In other words, policy schools’ faculties face a greater array of professional demands than their disciplinary colleagues. APSIA schools simultaneously embrace the disciplinary criteria for excellence and still try to maintain a close policy focus as they seek to bridge the gap between these two worlds. How feasible this effort will turn out to be hinges on whether policy school faculty can indeed do it all.
Introduction
How do intellectual leaders of professional schools of international affairs, whose institutions primarily educate and train master's students for careers in government, the non-governmental sector, and the private sector, differ from academic administrators in disciplinary departments, whose primary raison d’être is producing the next generation of scholars whose primary task is to conduct basic research, in terms of how they see the academic enterprise and their expectations of faculty research and writing? We asked Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA) deans and top-50 political science department chairs in the United States a range of questions designed to highlight where they shared similar expectations and where they diverged.
The original idea for such a “Delphi survey” (essentially asking the experts) of APSIA deans came from MIT political scientist Stephen Van Evera (1997, 26, 70–71, and 72–73). He suggested that these deans would have a unique perspective within the academy as to which academic PhD programs are producing scholars who get hired to teach the next generation of policymakers. In his view, this group is uniquely placed in the center of the bridge between the policy world and the Ivory Tower to help us identify those academic programs that are likeliest to break down the barriers between the academic and practitioner communities. Our colleagues from the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) program at the College of William and Mary recommended adding a comparative element by also polling the chairs of top-50 political science departments as a window into how disciplinary departments think about social science's relevance question.
The results of our recent survey of APSIA deans, the leading professional body for international relations-oriented policy schools, and chairs of Top-50 political sciences departments, reveal not only some predictable differences but also some surprising overlap. While there are many issues that our data shed light upon, we recognize that hiring, promotion, and tenure are likely to be the most impactful of them in terms of shaping the larger climate of schools and departments. Specifically, we find a clear convergence between disciplinary departments and APSIA schools on the core requirements for promotion and tenure: Peer-reviewed publications in high-impact scholarly journals and leading university presses. Any notion that policy schools are less “academically rigorous” than disciplinary departments is out of date given the current expectations for faculty, who need to meet the same scholarly criteria as faculty in disciplinary departments no matter which academic path they choose if they hope to be successful on the tenure track. But rather than relax demands for other activities by their faculty as they hold them to the expectations of their disciplines, APSIA deans still expect significant policy and broader public engagement from them. In other words, policy schools’ faculties face a greater array of professional demands than their disciplinary colleagues.
Our results highlight a continuing intellectual gap between these two parts of the academy, but one that manifests itself in somewhat unexpected ways. APSIA schools simultaneously embrace the disciplinary criteria for excellence and still try to maintain a close policy focus as they seek to bridge the gap between these two worlds. How feasible this effort will turn out to be hinges on whether policy school faculty can indeed do it all. And the deans’ interest in hiring faculty who can write for policy and public audiences should not obscure another issue, which is the content of the courses that future policymakers are taking. When policymakers are surveyed, they assign relatively little importance to “formal education” as a source of their “most important intellectual skills” (Avey and Desch 2014, 237). To the extent that public policy schools have adopted disciplinary standards for judging the quality of academic scholarship, their faculty may be designing courses that are more disciplinarily focused and thus may crowd out policy-focused material from their academic curricula.
The next section describes the survey in more detail. The third section discusses the similarities and differences between deans and chairs. The fourth section acknowledges the limits of our findings and suggests areas for further research. The fifth section offers some concluding thoughts about the implications of our findings for policymakers and the academy.
Read the full International Studies Perspectives article here.