To all,
The recent announcement by the Trump Administration that they are considering the merger of the Department of Education and the Department of Labor warrants a remark. I let this sit because I do not intend it to be viewed in any way as a political commentary. Indirectly, however, this change influences all of our members. Commentators describe the proposed merger as being consistent with Trump’s campaign pledge to reduce the size and increase the efficiency of government. Nobody can argue against those goals. Perhaps a merger will improve government in these two crucial areas. As usual, the devil is in the details.
As long as the key functions of the two agencies are maintained or improved this could be good for AUPHA members and for the country. If the new merged agency has a broader range of disparate responsibilities, however, it may even become less responsive to the needs of constituents than the two more focused agencies. In addition, combining the agencies may not reduce the number of government workers or the combined budgets. Need to wait for that detail.
Most importantly, these are structurally two very different types of organizations. The proposed 2019 discretionary budget for the Department of Labor is $9.4 B and they have about 17,700 employees. The Department of Education has a proposed discretionary budget of $59.9 B with about 4000 employees. With six times the budget and 25% of the employees, the Department of Education is a very different organization with different operational characteristics. Merging agencies with these differences will be difficult at best.
How might this impact AUPHA programs? It seems to me that we are ahead of the curve on the stated value of the merger. Much of the commentary highlights the importance of aligning education preparation to the needs of the labor market. Artificial barriers between education and the workforce make no sense and perhaps the merger can facilitate that alignment. Thank you very much, AUPHA graduate and undergraduate programs have done a good job to make that link thus should be the model for other academic disciplines. We continuously link our educational content to the ever-changing needs of the market. Programs have advisory groups made up of alumni and others in practice and use input from these groups to keep our content relevant. We also encourage students to complete a variety of internships, residencies or fellowships to strengthen our students’ the link to practice. Finally, programs routinely hire current or former practice professionals as either full-time faculty, adjuncts or “executives in residence.”
Comments?