Schools of public policy and executive education: An opportunity missed?

Executive education programs at schools of public policy are currently under examined in the literature. More than their strictly academic counterparts, executive education programs must be immediately relevant to the needs of practitioners and should be grounded in evidence of what works to improve public management. This article draws attention to the uneven global development of executive education, with American schools leading the way by a significant margin. Among schools who do engage in this activity there is an emerging orthodoxy based on the dominance of an “action learning” framework, a curriculum focused on leadership and management skills, and a faculty supplemented by practitioners with experience in public policy development and service delivery. Executive education has the potential to bridge the gap between theory and practice by bringing the research and expertise of public policy schools to a much broader community.