DWU offers masters for public servants

A MASTER’S degree to upskill managers of the public service has begun at Divine Word University this year.
Ten senior public servants from sectors of government, including two chief executive officers of hospitals, are enrolled in the Master of Public Administration (MPA) programme.
According to programme conveners, the 10 public servants have shown great keenness in the MPA study as a step forward to revitalise the public service, which is often criticised for its performance.
The public servants are at the Madang campus for a three-week residential component of their study.
They are taking classes in three units – public administration theory and practice, managing information technology in the public sector and public service human resource management.
Ethics in public service was the first subject the students studied in the first semester of the programme.
The ethics unit was taught by DWU president, Fr Jan Czuba, who is an ardent advocate of ethical conduct at the work place, politics and other areas in life.
A course convener of the MPA programme, Prof Gudrun Curri, from Dalhausie University in Canada, said last Friday Papua New Guinea needed a tailored master’s degree programme to revitalise its public service.
Curri said she was impressed with the approach of the 10 senior public servants who started the MPA this year.
She said the public servants demonstrated they wanted to be advocates of change in their work places on completion of studies.
The MPA has eight units to be studied over two years.
Participants are required to study four units per year.
Curri said the MPA was born out of DWU’s successful Master of Business Administration (MBA) programme offered by the Port Moresby campus.
She said several senior public servants took up the MBA programme and it dawned on programme convenors that public servants needed a separate master’s degree because the MBA was largely from a private sector context.