Publications of the University of Texas Pub lictions Committee: W. J. BATTLE E. c. BARKO J. C. TowNES A. CASWELL ELLIS w. s. CARTER R.A.LAW KILLIS CAMPBELL J. A. LOMAX F. w. SIMONDS A. c. JUDSON The University publishes bulletins six times a month. These comprise the official publications of the University publica­tions on humanistic and scientific subjects, bulletins prepared by the Department of Extension and by the Bureau of Munci­pal Research, and other bulletins of general educational in­terest. With the exception of special numbers, any bulletin will be sent to a citizen of Texas free on request. All communica­tions about Ur:liversity publications should be addressed to the Editor of University Publications, University of Texas, Auatin. A C. Baldwin & Sons, Auattn, Texas BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS 191!5: No. 47 AUGUST 20 1915 University Training for Municipal Administration BY Herman G. James, J. D., Ph. D. Associate Professor of Government and Director of the Bureau of Municipal Research and Refer-ence MUNICIPAL RESEARCH SERIES No. ll PubUahed by the University six times a month and entered aa second-class matter at the postofiice at AUSTIN, TEXAS The benefits of education and of useful knowledge, generally diftused through a community, are essential to the preservation of a free gov· ernment. Sam Houston. Cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. . • • It is the only dictator that freemen acknowl­edge and the only securit7 that tree­men desire. M.irabeau B. Lamar. PREFACE. An ever increasing interest is being shown in the problem of providing our cities with well trained administrative officials. The spread of the city manager plan which is based on the idea of administration by experts makes the problem an increas­ingly pressing one. American universities are beginning to take steps for meeting the situation. It is with the hope of aiding the movement by pointing out a more or less concrete way of attacking the problem that this bulletin has been pre­pared. With a concrete proposal before their eyes, it is also hoped that many persons who have been indifferent or sceptical about the abstract proposal will awaken to the possibilities of the plan. Needless to say, the plan herein proposed is meant to be primarily suggestive and is doubtless capable of indefinite improvement. H. G. J. UNIVERSITY TRAINING FOR MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION There would appear to be no need of dwelling at this place on the necessity of providing training for positions in the municipal administrative service nor of pointing out that this training, for the more important positions at least, must be provided by our universities. The demand for expert, trained officials in our municipal service is recognized on all hands, and the obligation imposed on our universities, especially those maintained by the state, to provide the necessary facilities for making expert administrators would seem to be self-evident, if our state universities are not to fail in one of their mos:t im­portant duties toward the state that maintains them.1 We may confine our discussion, therefore, to the best method or means by which universities can meet this demand for trained administrators. In the first place we may agree, I believe, that the University is not the place to train each and every official and employe who may be required in the service of the city. There should indeed be facilities for some kind of training for every municipal employe from the street sweeper and ditch digger up, but no one will contend that the university is the proper agency for furnishing that kind of training. It is in the higher positions, which demand more than mere technical knowledge, that there is real need for university-trained men, that is, men with broad and liberal ideals. These positions would naturally be the department heads, their immediate as­sistants and the chiefs of divisions. Now in attempting to outline a program for university train­ing in municipal administration one or two preliminary con­siderations may first be disposed of. In the first place1 it must be kept in mind that the purpose of such an undertaking is to train men for what should be and is coming more and more to be a real profession. Therefore, the course of training to be outlined should be regarded as a professional course in just 1. See an article by the author, "The City's Need, the University's Opportunity," in The A.meriean Oity, Vol. X, No. 3, p. 249. 6 Bulletin of the University of Texas the same way that the now generally established professional courses of law, medicine and engineering are regarded. This would involve the establishment of a distinct department for that purpose and the granting of special professional degrees. This arrangement might raise some questions of university re­organization in many institutions, but there are no great diffi­culties in the way of a satisfactory adjustment of those ques­tions. We shall, therefore, postpone a discussion of those mat­ters until after we have determined the arrangement and con­tent of proper courses of training. In the second place, it should be noted that there is a con­siderable amount of training required for this service which may be termed technical in one sense but is in a larger sense liberal, in that it will turn out men distinctly better prepared to be good citizens even if they do not become officials ; namely, a thorough foundation in the sorial sciences. Without this foundation you may have men well informed on certain tech­nical aspects of their work but lacking in that larger social consciousness which should distinguish the educated from the uneducated man. .In this way only can the full advantage of having in responsible positions university-trained men be re­alized. With these preliminary observations we may begin the con­struction of definite curricula in municipal administration to fit in as nearly as may be with the general scheme of university education in this country as a whole. The first consideration is to determine what natural division of subjects presents itself for adoption, since manifestly it would be impossible to train a man in all of the technical activities of city government. It would seem to be the most natural and logical way of proceeding to examine these activities of the city and to see if they do not fall into certain large groups of subjects which are more closely related to each other in the group than to any of the subjects outside the group. There are certain lines of demarcation which seem obvious and others which prove on examination to be almost equally natural. In the first place then, I believe, we can say that the legal department of the city represents a branch of activity which not only requires special professional training, distinct from that which will answer in any of the other departments, but the problems with which it is concerned are different from those confronting the other administrative services, no matter how they may be divided. A separate legal department is therefore not only universal but logical and desirable. In the same way, I believe, we can say that the administra­tion of measures for the protection of public health presents a sufficiently homogeneous field to warrant its being regarded, as it almost invariably is in practice, a distinct branch of municipal activity. Of course it must be clearly understood that in speaking of distinct branches of municipal activity it is not meant that such branches are unrelated to other branches. On the contrary, it is clearly recognized that no one of these fields can be isolated from the others, and that absolutely hard and fast lines of demarcation cannot be set up between them. Obviously the legal department must be consulted by the other departments in regard to the legal validity of action already taken or proposed. To a certain extent this is true of all the departments in their relation to each other. Nevertheless they have their own peculiar work which is not directly related to the field of action covered by the other departments. A third distinct branch of the municipal administrative service is that dealing with the finances of the city, including the assessment and collection of taxes, the receipt and expenditures of all moneys and the accounting and financial reporting of the city. This department, like the legal branch of the service, covers in a sense the activities of all the others on their ac­counting and financial side, but nevertheless it demands the services of men with special training in financial and account­ing matters. Fourthly, we may constitute the educational work of the city as a separate field of activity. This would include not only the schools, but also the other educational instrumentalities, such as museums and libraries. Fifthly, we may distinguish those administrative functions of the city which demand a knowledge of engineering as the prime requisite. These would include the whole matter of care of the streets, sewers, water supply and all public utilities whether owned and operated by the city or merely subject to Bulletin of the University of Texas its supervi!!lion and regulation, and the care of the physical property of the city. There would seem to remain then only two general kinds of functions not covered by those already enumerated. These are the preservation of public safety, that is, the protection of person and property of the individual, and the furtherance of the public welfare by positive measures of social amelioration. The public health department, it is true, is also concerned with the protection of the safety of the community from the sanitary point of view, and the education department is engaged in positive measures of social amelioration in its activities. But, as we have suggested, the particular problems which confront these departments are sufficiently specialized and yet sufficiently comprehensive to demand for their treatment a separate depart­mental organization. The public safety work would involve the activities of the police force of the city and of the fire fighting forces, and the connection between these two in actual operation is so close as evidently to demand a common nead. But it is equally true, it would seem, that the social activities of the city, which would, outside of the educational field, involve prin­cipally the administration of public charity and the prevention of crime, are so intimately and inseparably connected with the police problem of the city that one and the same person should have charge of what are in reality but two phases of the same municipal problem. In these six fields of municipal administration would appear to be included all conceivable activities of the modern city. The administrative organization of the city ought, therefore, to have reference to these natural divisions, and the problem of training men in universities for the higher administrative service in cities becomes therefore one of offering courses of study which would specifically fit men to serve as heads of these six departments. Our university school of municipal adminis­tration should then contain six main courses of study corre­sponding to the six main municipal activities outlined above. Taking up now one after another of these activities more minutely, let us examine the particular matters on which the prospective heads of such departments should be informed. But first it will be easier to point out the non-technical or liberal elements which it was argued at the outset should form part of the training of every higher municipal official if he is to be a truly university-trained man. On this question of how large an element the so-called cul­tural studies, or at least those not having a direct bearing on the information whieh a department head should have con­cerning the matters under his control, should play there is likely to be a considerable difference of opinion. The maximum amount of such work, will, however, be limited rather by ne­cessity than by choice. That is, the amount Qf purely liberaliz.. ing studies that can be pursued in addition to the subjects having a direct bearing on future problems will be determined by the fact that the period of training as a whole must not contemplate a course of study disproportionately greater than that now demanded for the best training in the other professions. For that reason we may assume that a seven year course of study would be about the highest limit which, for the present at leastr could be set for such a course, except for the health and en­gineering departments. The amount of time available then for purely liberalizing studies would vary in the different courses planned according to the amount of technical informa­tion that must be covered within the maximum period men­tioned above. But certain fundamental subjects may be set down as necessary in every one of the six courses. Two collegiate courses in English and rhetoric may be re­garded as a general minimum requirement for the equipment of a future department head. Ability to express one's opinions effectively in writing, demands not merely a knowledge of dic­tion and grammar, but practice in writing as well. The abso­lute need of such training can best be shown by referring to the linguistically almost unintelligible reports prepared and presented by the majority of public officials today. Another requirement of general application would be certain fundamental courses in the social sciences, that is, sociology, economics, and government, together with the amount of history necessary to make these subjects intelligible. Not only are the social sciences being regarded more and more as the rightful heirs of the old time classics as part of every liberal education, but they are ab­solutely indispensable in a course which attempts to train public Bulletin of the University of Texas officials who shall have a truly social and public-spirited as well as broad point of view of the problems they must meet. A thorough course in the development and present state of mu­nicipal science not only in this country but in other countries as well is evidently a necessity for every municipal department head no matter what his special field may be. In no other way can a broad oversight over the whole problem of municipal gov­ernment, and the necessary co-operation of all its parts, with the consequent sympathy for and appreciation of the importance of the other departments, be insured for the man we are trying to train on a liberal basis. Thirdly, in view of the fact that we are in this country in matters of municipal government far behind France and Germany, it is of the greatest importance that a department head should be in a position to study the experience of those countries in the past and to keep up with the developments in his line of work at the present time. A good reading knowledge of French and German becomes therefore a matter of prime importance for our purposes and as such a reading knowledge is not usually secured in the secondary schools we must insist on the equivalent of three years of train­ing in each of these languages. This requirement, like that of the social sciences, can be viewed for the purposes here in mind as even more technical in nature than cultural, though of course the cultural value of such studies is apparent. One other sub­ject remains to be mentioned as being of great importance to every prospective department head no matter what his specialty :may be, and that is a knowledge of the fundamentals of ac­counting. The ability to understand, interpret, and present financial statements is one which every department head must possess if he is not to be greatly handicapped, nay even dis­qualified from properly supervising the activities of the depart­ment under his control. Taking as the basis for normal work in our universities fifteen hours of recitations per week throughout the year, and assum­ing that three hours a week be given to each of the subjects enumerated above, we find that the equivalent of about three years' work should be prescribed for all of the six groups of courses alike, leaving for each one three full years to be devoted to strictly technical subjects relating specifically to the field of work to be undertaken. Now we can take up in order the individual courses and examine what technical subjects would be included in each. This can be done only by considering in some detail the matters which will come up before the various department heads for consideration and determination. What are the technical subjects in which the head of the legal department of city must be trained for the proper per­formance of his duties~ In the first place, of course, he should be a lawyer trained in all the subjects which are required for admission to the bar in his state. But he must have in addi­tion a most thorough training in the subjects commonly in­cluded in the term public law. He must have an intimate ac­quaintance with the constitutional law of the United States and of his particular state. He must be an authority on the law of municipal corporations particularly in his own state, he must have had a course in the law of officers and adminis­trative law in general, and should be acquainted with the legal principles governing the matter of taxation. These are all questions that are most intimately connected with the perform­ance of his ordinary duties as city attorney. Unfortunately there are few even of the standard law schools in the United States which give adequate attention to these subjects, so im­portant to the city attorney, but this is a branch of legal in­struction which will have to be developed as rapidly as pos­sible wherever it is intended to furnish opportunities for uni­versity training of public officials. Another subject of imme­diate importance to the prospective city attorney which is all but neglected in our law schools at present is the technique of bill drafting. One of the most important duties of the city attorney is to draft in the shape of ordinances the legislative desires of the city council. To do this properly he must not only have a clear understanding of what the city can legally attempt to do, which is what he would learn from the courses in public law enumerated above, but he must understand how to enact a given measure in proper and adequate language. Ex­amples of meaningless, self-contradictory and otherwise utterly ridiculous enactments are to be found in great abundance in the ordinances of our cities, merely because the fundamental knowl­edge of proper bill drafting was lacking in the framing of BuUetitt of fl&e University of Texas measures which in their original intent may have been not only legally valid but entirely desirable. The prospective head of the legal department of a city should, therefore, in addition to the regular three-year course of study recognized as a standard for legal training, devote an entire year to public law and the science of bill-drafting. In the training of a prospective director of a department of public health, it is evident that greater emphasis should be laid than is now done in the ordinary medical course on preventive medicine and hygiene. Considerable time should be devoted in the medical course to a study of the sources of danger to public health found in our cities and to the best methods of meetmg and eliminating those dangers. It would not be necessary that the director of the department of public health be trained in all the special subjects which are required of medical students intending .to practice the profession, for some of those subjects would virtually never be of use to the director of a department of public health, or at least would be distinctly of less use in making him an efficient municipal official than would others that might be substituted. But it must be remembered that the pro­fession for which we are planning to train men is itself but in the process of making and that the opportunities for employ­ment in that line are, owing to the political methods of making appointments still prevalent, few and uncertain. We cannot, therefore, turn out at the present time men who would make efficient municipal departmental heads but who would be at a disadvant.-'tge as compared with their fellows in the related pro­"t:essions to which they may have to turn to make a living. For that reason it would seem necessary for the present at any rate to include in the training of our prospective health department head those subjects on which he must be informed to be ad­mitted to practice as a physician. From this point of view, therefore, it would be almost necessary for the prospective di­rector of public health to spend an additional year in the medical department specializing in subjects related to sanitation and public health. As the best medical schools of the country are now requiring the completion of a four year's college course for entrance to the medical school this period of eight years would not be exceeded by the proposal here made. The third branch of administration for which it was found necessary to give men special training is the financial adminis­tration of the city. For the position of director of finances a tnan should receive as his technical training a thorough drilling in all branches of accounting, book-keeping, reporting, and au­diting, and in public finance, including methods of assessment and taxation, the investment of public funds and their proper custody and administration. He should be equipped with a knowledge of the principles of insurance which would enable him to manage a municipal insurance department to advantage. The director of public education should, of course, specialize in the history and philosophy of education, in school adminis­tration, in the educational systems of other countries, in fact, in everything that is offered in first class university schools of education today. In addition to matters dealing with the pub­lic school system of the city, he should be informed on the best methods of administering the other educational agencies of the city such as libraries, museums, municipal theaters, etc. He would not of course be charged with the duty of immediately directing the work of all these agencies, but he would have the duty of supervising their direction by men who are special­ists in these various fields. All of these agencies and others that might be mentioned are intended to serve the same _general ends, namely the improvement of educational facilities in the city, and to prevent jealousies, duplication and mutual inter­ference they should all be under the direction of a single de­partment head. The director of the department of engineering must be thor­oughly trained in the fundamental subjects in civil engineering with special emphasis on the sanitary side, as the most con­siderable portion of his duties are concerned with the civil en­gineering branch of engineering knowledge, namely the care of streets, sewers, parks, water works, etc. But he must like­wise have an acquaintance with the elements of electrical engi­neering, and with architecture and city planning, as there are important questions coming under his jurisdiction which require a general knowledge of the fundamental principles of those subjects. Of course, the director of the engineering department cannot be an expert in all these branches, but he must not be Bulletin of the University of Texas. absolutely ignorant of their foundation principles or he will be unable even to come to intelligent conclusions concerning the opinions which may be rendered to him by experts under his direction. Furthermore, as the director of engineering is to have under his care the public property and works of the city as well as the supervision over the privately owned public utilities, he must be thoroughly trained in cost accounHng and rate making. As in the case of the public health training, so in the case of the public engineering training, it would. be highly desirable that a prospective department head devote eight years instead of seven to his training. In this way he could receive virtually the same civil engineering training which his fellow students receive and at the same time spend almost two years in these additional courses, for at the present time there is usually included in the ordinary four-year civil engineering courses the equivalent of an entire year in subjects which are not civil engineering, such as English, economics, business law and certain electrical or mechanical engineering subjects. :F'inally, we come to consider the technical training requisite for a proper director of public safety and welfare. The duties of such a department head demand not only a thorough knowl­edge of police administration and methods of fire prevention and protection in this and other countries, as well as the exist­ing and past methods of dispensing public charity, but a care­ful study of the social and economic explanations of poverty and vice and their proper treatment. In other words he must become an expert in diagnosing the social and economic ills of the city and be able to apply positive measures for their amelioration and cure. This would necessitate advanced studies in all the social sciences as well as psychology and biology and would occupy very fully the three years remaining for the more strictly technical training in his line of work. In each of these six main courses of training a suitable thesis should be required in the main line of preparation before a de­gree be given. Furthermore, it is important that this theoretical training be supplemented by practical work. It should, there­fore, be provided that the candidate for a degree in municipal administration spend the last two summers of his course of training in the active service of some municipality in the de­ partment work for which he is preparing. This training must, to be effective, be obtained in a city of not less than thirty thousand inhabitants and along lines laid down by the pro­fessor in charge of the main course of study pursued. Its prin­cipal purpose should be to acquaint the student with the actual work of administration and to enable him to s·ee in what re­spects the work as actually carried on could be improved in the light of what he has learned in the theoretical part of his course. In order to insure that the proper facilities be offered to students for this practical work, the legislature should im­pose upon the cities of the state the obligation to provide ade­quate facilities, without expense to themselves, for receiving such students temporarily into their service. Probably in most cities these facilities would be voluntarily offered, at least to residents, provided the results of their observations were not made public in the shape of criticisms of the existing adminis­tration. Having considered in rather general outline the cours·es of study which should be offered by a university for the training of municipal administrative officials, it remains to consider the c1uestion of degrees and of the organization of the work within the university administration. The matter of degrees would seem to be a simple one. As the proposed course of study is a professional course the degrees conferred should be pro­fessional degrees, that is, indicative of the work pursued. As the A. B. and A. M. degrees have so long stood for liberal as distinguished from vocational training it would be better not to use those terms. It is suggested that the degree of Master or Doctor of Municipal Administration would be a suitable one. Pollowing the initials M. M. A. could follow in parentheses the particular designations of the courses followed, such as ''In Public Health,'' ''In Public Finance,'' etc. Such a title would indicate that the degree was a higher degree, that is, more advanced than the bachelor degree, and at the same time show the special character of the training received therefor. The question of administrative co-ordination of the profes­sional course proposed presents somewhat greater difficulties. Since this is strictly professional training it should be given in a professional school on a par with the existing legal, medi­ 16 Bulletin of the University of Texas cal, educational and engineering departments. But a difficulty arises in making this a distinct department because all of the work outlined in that department is given by one or the other of the existing departments. In other words, the curriculum of the proposed department cannot be determined or altered save with the co-operation and consent of the other depart­ments involved. Therefore, some means of permanent co­operation would seem necessary, and it is suggested that the governing body of the new department should consist of an executive committee comprising the deans of all the depart­ments whose courses are involved. This would provide a gov­erning body capable of co-operation and able to assist the devel­opment of the work along proper lines. The active head of the department should, however, he a man who has a general knowledge of all the problems of municipal administration and is a specialist in the governmen­tal side of city problems. This man would naturally be one who has specialized in municipal administration and who is in charge of that subject in the University. His recommendations would of course carry great weight with the executive board, which indeed would in practice be rather an advisory than an active executive body. There remains a word to be said about the training for city managers. The writer has not infrequently received letters from persons desirous of fitting themselves for the place of city manager. It seems worth while here to repeat what has been said in answer to such inquiries. It is not possible to at­tempt to train city managers as such distinct from the depart­ment heads whose training is herein outlined. If city manager­ships develop, as they should, into a real profession, it will not be possible for a man to step into such a position, at least in any but the smallest cities, after merely completing an academic course of training. The city manager must not only have a thorough training in the subjects mentioned as necessary for all department heads, but he must have proven executive ability of the highest order. Such ability can, however, show itself only in the actual work of administration and no wise city will therefore appoint a city manager who has not shown executive ability, no matter how excellent his academic training may be. But the opportunity for acquiring executive experience and demonstrating executive ability can come to a man only in actual administrative service in positions of the more responsible kind, that is as a department head or as assistant department head. To get into such positions the prospective city manager would have to be trained in one of the six fundamental courses outlined above. Therefore, it is clear that the only way to train for a city managership is to choose one of the six main branches of administration for study and then after acquiring experience and a reputation for executive ability go from such a position into the position of city manager. Only in the smallest cities is there a possibility that a man with a good training for city engineer would be employed as city manager without previous administrative experience, for such cities could not afford to keep a manager for purely super visory duties but would have to entrust to him one or more of the city departments for immediate direction. As most of the administrative work in a small municipality deals with the engineering problems of the city it would be possible, by appoint­ing a well trained engineer as city manager to save the salary of a city engineer. In this way a young graduate in municipal administration who had specialized in engineering might receive appointment as city manager in a small city at a salary sufficient to attract him but too small to draw a competent man already established in his profession away from his private practice. If such a young man had the proper general training pre­scribed above and proved himself a competent executive he might reasonably hope to receive a call as manager to a larger city and so enter the career. Except in that case, however, the graduate who had specialized in engineering would show no points of advantage over men trained in any of the other fields of municipal administration, as far as qualification for a possible city managership is con­cerned. On the contrary it seems clear that other things being equal, the man who had had the best training in the social problems of the city would be preeminently fitted for the post as city manager, where, as in the larger cities, the social problem in its broader sense is by far the most important, the most diffi­cult to handle and the one which the ordinary municipal official is least capable of solving. PUBLICATIONS OF THE BUREAU OF MUNICIPAL RESEARCH AND REFERENCE. No. TITLE 1. A Model Charter for Texas Cities, Herman G. James, Feb. 10, 1914 (edition exhausted). 2. A Model Charter for Texas Cities, Herman G. James, March 1, 1914 (second edition). 3. Announcement of Courses in Municipal Administration at the University of Texas, Herman G. James, Sept. 5, 1914. 4. Methods of Sewage Disposal for TerAs Cities, Robert M. Jameson, Oct. 1, 1914 (edition exhausted). 5. A Model Civil Service Code for Texas Cities, Herman G. James, Dec. 20, 1914. 6. What Is the City Manager Plan? Herman G. James, Feb. 20, 1915. 7. A Student Survey of Austin, Texas, William B. Hamilton; summarized by Herman G. James, Feb. 25, 1915. 9. Street Paving in Texas, Edited by Edward T. Paxton; principal article by L. W. Kemp, May 5, 1915. 10. Public Service Rates in Texas Cities, Edward T. Paxton, Aug. 10, 1915. 11. University Training for Municipal Administration, Her­man G. James, Aug. 20, 1915.