WINTER 2012 - National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and ...

Class Rooms
of higher learning and its subsequent effects on personnel selection. In certain
cases, I wanted to test ASPA’s (Code of Ethics, 2006) and NASPAA’s (2011, p.
39) performance in relation to the democratic and egalitarian values, including
“equality,” “fairness,” “representativeness,” and “affirmative action,” they support.
I also wanted to explore how other academic fields and organizations have fared
in achieving these same ideals. In 2002, I took early retirement to pursue these
interests full-time.
My first research effort involved testing whether PA has met its self-imposed
obligation to be a cutting-edge discipline, in this case by addressing the effects
of social class inequalities on public sector operations. My analysis showed that
our field’s major texts and key literature sources have all but ignored class. When
mentioned, it is in conventional terms and without questioning the effects
of socioeconomic origins on public policy outcomes. I ended my article by
proposing steps the discipline can take to remedy this oversight (Oldfield, 2003).
Later, two colleagues and I (Oldfield, Candler, & Johnson, 2006) expanded
on this theme by examining the publication record of the leading PA journals in
America and three other countries for their history of issuing articles about class
and four other social equity topics. Our analysis showed that since the1940s,
these outlets have been a no-show or included papers on these equity topics long
after they were fashionable in other circles.
Over the years, I have attended several National ASPA Conferences. In
2003, I was an invited panelist at the Washington, D.C. gathering. Paying all
my expenses out of pocket, I kept notes on my travel costs and eventually used
these and my experiences at past meetings to write an opinion piece for PA
Times about the classism inherent in our national sessions. Among other things,
I mentioned the lavish conference hotel accommodations, the confiscatory
registration fees, the panel themes, and various other Veblenesque offenses
to ASPA’s self-styled democratic ideals. I ended my discussion with a list of
proposals for making these national conferences more accessible and welcoming
to people of all social classes and socioeconomic backgrounds (Oldfield, 2006).
In 2005, I tested whether academic PA’s commitment to diversity among its
graduate students included concern for their socioeconomic origins. I analyzed
this question by surveying our discipline’s leading schools to find out whether
they include class background among their student diversity criteria. I assumed,
by definition, if these elite programs’ integration efforts include actively enrolling
more first-generation college students of working-class origins, other PA schools
will eventually follow their precedent. The survey results showed none of these
schools gathered and maintained such background information, let alone having
a class-based diversity plan in place. I recommended these elite programs expand
their democratizing efforts accordingly (Oldfield, 2007b). Because many PA
professors hold PhDs in political science or, if not, have completed coursework
in the subject, I replicated my research at America’s top 50 rated political science
Journal of Public Affairs Education 39