Engaging industry in curriculum design and delivery in public policy teaching: A strategic framework

Abstract

Public policy is frequently characterised as a sub-discipline of political science which is practically oriented and concerned with what government does and does not do. Further, policy analysis can also be characterised as concerned with either the analysis ‘of policy’ or ‘for policy’. This clearly has implications for the design and delivery of public policy courses. More broadly, higher education in Australia, like elsewhere, faces calls to ensure that students graduate with a range of skills and aptitudes that make them ‘job ready’ and able to engage with ‘real world problems’. One of the ways in which this can be pursued is through industry engagement. However, limited research has been undertaken regarding what this might entail or how it can be pursued. Accordingly, in this paper we explore these issues by: (a) situating engagement within the field of public policy; (b) reviewing how the changing context of higher education, with a particular focus on the drivers and rationale for greater engagement with industry, intersects with the teaching of public policy; and (c) providing a framework which helps to clarify the different modes, potential and risks associated with industry engagement.

Keywords

Public policy teaching and learning industry engagement employability

Introduction

The teaching of public policy involves a range of challenges, some specific to the discipline, and others common to the teaching of humanities and social science fields. Within the context of the ongoing reform of the higher education sector, this paper examines a key dilemma for the teaching of public policy – how best to engage with ‘industry’ on curriculum design and delivery. In this article, we use the term ‘industry engagement’ to refer to the relationship between universities and key employers and external stakeholders, although we appreciate that both higher education in general, and public policy in particular, also has a broader public purpose.

This article is part of the wider special issue focussing on the teaching and pedagogy of public policy in Australia. Using Australia as our case study, we explore the challenges, risks and benefits involved in undertaking industry engagement. Here we offer a new strategic framework for exploring engagement with key stakeholders, with the ultimate aim of improving and facilitating better links between teachers and practitioners of public policy. Whilst our case is Australian-focussed, we argue that our framework can be adapted to other settings, and that the insights generated have wider generalisability – albeit with some obvious country/regional specific differences that need to be taken into account. In this section we set out the initial context for understanding the drivers of industry engagement.

One of the primary goals of public policy instruction in higher education is to produce graduates with the requisite skills, knowledge and abilities to undertake policy work (Di Francesco, 2015). In this respect, it is assumed that many of the students who study public policy at both undergraduate and graduate level wish to either work in policy-focussed roles, or enhance their skills in order to seek more demanding roles. A key employment destination for public policy students is inevitably the public sector, and the wider network of statutory agencies. Further fields of employment include non-governmental organisations and private sector organisations with relevant policy/project roles. Within this context, an implicit understanding for students is that their degrees and topics will enable them to find suitable employment (e.g. see Lehmann, 2009 for a discussion of the expectations of working-class students).

In Australia, but also elsewhere, many universities develop a generic graduate profile which outlines some of the core skills and knowledge expected to meet the minimum standards at the tertiary level. These generic standards can be adapted to relevant discipline areas, including public policy. Relatedly, across the tertiary sector in Australia, there is wider mapping of graduate employment outcomes. For example, Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT), run by the Australian National University’s Centre for Social Research, conducts regular surveys on both graduate outcomes and employer satisfaction. At the individual university level, most institutions also undertake graduate surveys to track the employability of their students, often as a promotional tool to entice new students.

Universities also set goals around three core areas of their work: teaching, research and ‘engagement’. Many universities set out strategic goals for the content of their teaching which presupposes a match with the needs of relevant industry sectors. For example, Murdoch University in its 2012–2017 strategic plan (p.13) seeks ‘To develop relevant curriculum sensitive to contemporary societal needs and labour markets’. Implicit in such statements is an appeal for engagement with ‘industry’ to ensure the curriculum is appropriate for the wider sector. In some fields (such as law, social work and accounting) some degrees must undergo specific accreditation by the relevant industry association. Given that public policy students could potentially undertake policy work in a broad range of fields and destinations, this tends not to be a feature of the discipline in Australia. As a result, university engagement with the wider public sector and industry tends to be more ad hoc, episodic and piecemeal. This presents strengths and opportunities, as well as risks, for the teaching of public policy. As we discuss in the paper, there tends to be a tacit argument that industry engagement is inherently positive and worth pursuing. Whilst there are risks in not engaging with industry, we argue that policy teachers should be critical in how and why they seek engagement.

Within this wider context, our primary aim is to examine the different types of engagement that universities may undertake with their core industry partner – namely, in the Australian context, the public service (either state or federal). The nature of engagement will inevitably vary across the tertiary sector, but the focus here is predominantly on curriculum development and delivery. The core questions to ask are: what input, if any, do policy teachers seek from the public sector to inform the content of the relevant policy topics and degrees offered? How desirable is engagement? What might be the ‘most effective’ methods to do this?

In exploring the potential for industry engagement, the paper is organised in the following way. First, we situate engagement within the field of public policy scholarship and teaching, and explore the inherent tension between its critical and vocational impulses. Second, we review how the changing context of higher education, with a particular focus on the drivers and rationale for greater engagement with industry, intersects with the teaching of public policy. Third, we propose a strategic framework for engagement which helps to clarify the different modes of industry engagement. Finally, we discuss the potential uses, benefits and limits of industry engagement. In sum, whilst we see many merits in securing clearer and more meaningful dialogue with industry, we suggest a more strategic and systematic way to explore how this might be achieved.

Situating engagement within the field of public policy

The engagement agenda raises important questions for the field of public policy, centring broadly on issues of influence and relevance to the ‘real world’. As a way of beginning to tease out some pertinent aspects of this agenda, we situate public policy as a field of teaching and scholarship (in order to highlight challenges involved in teaching public policy) and briefly introduce how the engagement agenda intersects with public policy’s critical and vocational impulses.

On the face of it, there is much to be gained from industry engagement, and public policy has always had a practical orientation. Yet such engagement needs to occur with an appreciation that the needs (or wants) of industry do not necessarily align with the needs of society, or of individual students. However, we also acknowledge that thinking through engagement in the context of designing and delivering theoretically informed yet practically relevant courses is easier said than done, as is clear from related discussions on the links between theory and practice in the teaching of public policy (Adams et al., 2015; Cairney, 2015; Walker, 2009), the challenges associated with teaching public administration (Alford and Brock, 2014; Brock and Alford, 2014; Greenwood and Eggins, 1995; Van der Waldt, 2014) and the general public’s disdain for politics (and politicians) (Baltz, 2014; Evans, 2013; Proud, 2014; Sheppard, 2018).

The practical orientation and impulse of public policy can be seen in at least three ways. First, engagement (even if not called that) has been central to public policy scholarship since its emergence in the middle part of the 20th century (Ham and Hill, 1984; Howlett and Ramesh, 1995). For example, Howlett and Ramesh (1995: 3) characterise public policy’s origins as multidisciplinary, oriented to problem-solving and explicitly normative, where multidisciplinary is understood as ‘broadening the focus from political institutions’ to also embracing insights from sociology, economics, law, politics and other disciplines; problem-solving is understood as ‘orienting itself to the solution of real world problems’; and normative is understood as recognising ‘the impossibility of separating goals and means, or values and techniques, in the study of government’. Second, there are clear reasons why it is important to understand how policy is made and implemented, because of the centrality of public policy for how people are governed (Colebatch, 2002), major problems responded to (Considine, 1994: 2) and social conflict regulated (Hajer, 1995). Finally, this practical orientation is evident in Dye’s (1972: 2) much cited definition that public policy is concerned with ‘anything a government chooses to do or not to do’.

Conversely, public policy also has a critical orientation. First, it can be considered as being ‘virtually synonymous with political science’ (Fenna, 2004: 21) so consideration of questions of power are inherent. Second, as Wildavsky (1979) posited, policy analysis involves ‘speaking truth to power’. Schematically, these orientations are evident in the characterisation of policy analysis as concerned with either ‘analysis for policy’ or ‘analysis of policy’, which Ham and Hill (1984: 4) consider is important because it draws attention ‘to policy analysis as an academic activity concerned primarily with advancing understanding, and policy analysis as an applied activity mainly concerned with contributing to the solution of social problems’. Importantly, public policy research, and we would argue teaching, can and should be informed by a spectrum of purposes, with some of these possibilities indicated by Hill (2009) in Table 1.

Table 1.

Different kinds of policy analysis.

Analysis of policy
Studies of policy content	Studies which seek to describe and explain genesis and development of policies
Studies of policy outputs	Studies which seek to explain why levels of expenditure or service provision vary over time
Studies of policy process	Studies which focus on how policy decisions are made and how policies are shaped in action
Analysis for policy
Evaluation	Studies which are concerned with the impact policies have
Information for policy making	Studies which marshal data in order to assist policy makers reach decisions
Process advocacy	Studies which seek to improve the nature of policy-making systems through reallocation of functions and tasks
Policy advocacy	Involves the analyst pressing specific options and ideas in the policy processes

Source: Hill (2009).

It is possible to approach public policy scholarship and teaching in ways that are critical yet also practical, although the relative emphasis given to the two orientations may differ. To some extent this is evident in debates about the value or otherwise of the policy cycle model as a means for learning about public policy (Bridgman and Davis, 2003; Colebatch, 2005; Everett, 2003; Howard, 2005).

Policy textbooks also differ in the degree to which they embrace vocational versus critical objectives, as the following Australian examples indicate: The Australian Policy Handbook (Althaus et al., 2013: xi) is intended as a ‘practical, how-to guide for those encountering public policy anew’, while other texts explicitly seek to link theory and practice (Haigh, 2012), provide exposure to practical skills such as how to write a media release or policy briefing note (Maddison and Denniss, 2009), or offer practical yet explicitly political approaches to studying policy (Bacchi, 2009). The primary audience for such texts appears to be those with an eye to working as political advisors or policy officers in the government, private and community sectors rather than as academic public policy researchers. Clearly, there is much room to move within the critical–vocational space.

Having broadly situated engagement within public policy scholarship and teaching, we now briefly illustrate the implications of engagement with respect to the vocational and critical objectives of teaching public policy. Engagement can serve to shift the focus of scholarship and teaching between critical and vocational objectives, as illustrated in Figure 1, but it should be noted that engagement is complex and dynamic, rather than linear and deterministic.

Figure 1.

Critical and vocational orientations in public policy teaching.

It therefore requires a nuanced consideration of how different engagement strategies may influence the orientation of public policy scholarship and teaching. For example, while industry engagement may sharpen the focus on employability, it may also open new avenues for scholarship through researchers being exposed to contemporary policy and governance challenges facing practitioners. However, it may also be the case that the industry accreditation may skew courses towards ‘industry needs’ in ways that undermine broader critical context.

Finally, higher education in Australia, like elsewhere, faces calls to ensure that students graduate with a range of skills and aptitudes that make them ‘job ready’ and able to engage with ‘real world problems’ (Lawson et al., 2011; Papadopoulos et al., 2011). It is therefore important to consider the ways in which the engagement agenda is shaping the teaching of public policy, and this is what we turn to in the next section, outlining some of the key literature and knowledge in this field, to date.

The engagement agenda in the teaching of public policy

The debate over teaching practice in public policy reflects not only the trajectory of the discipline, but also broader dynamics in both higher education and the public sector. In this section we offer a critical overview of much of the current literature on the issue related to industry engagement. To some extent, whilst a number of scholars (e.g. Healy et al., 2014) have directly examined the issue of industry engagement, much of the extant literature indirectly approaches this issue. Here, we examine industry engagement through four key themes. We examine the drive for engagement through (a) the changing university business model; (b) changes in the public sector; (c) the contested nature of ‘employability’; and (d) the confluence of these agendas placing pressure on the curriculum design of public policy teaching.

In Australia the ‘traditional’ business model of higher education has changed, as the sector faces increasing cost pressures as a result of changing funding arrangements and the expansion of higher education. Higher education, Schulz (2013: iii) argues, ‘…under neoliberalism needed a new business model, and it found one in the corporate university’. The corporate university, according to Schulz, ‘took control of the curriculum in several ways in order to generate revenue…Professional education, such as in public or business administration, or in law school, became the cash cow of colleges and universities’.

Successive shifts in the burden of funding individual places at university from the state toward the individual, too, has fostered a transformation of the individual from student to consumer. As the personal cost of obtaining a university qualification has mounted, student concern with ‘employability’ has understandably intensified, particularly among those studying professional degrees (Lawson et al., 2011: 62). Governments, meanwhile, have had ‘increasing expectations of the returns that should derive from public investments’, including in higher education (Healy et al., 2014: 19). Industry, too, is concerned with the ‘employability’ of students, often expressing dissatisfaction over the dearth of generic and workplace skills amongst graduates (Papadopoulos et al., 2011: 7–8). Even generic skills, however, must be given shape by the discipline studied and the industry into which students will eventually enter.

For public policy, there is an additional concern from employers – chiefly, the public sector – that graduates possess particular competencies that allow for the practical application of techniques for problem-solving. That is, that students of public policy are taught primarily with an orientation toward practice over theory, applied skills over the understanding of processes and context (Scott, 2013: 434). The enduring debate in the discipline of public policy – the balance between teaching practice or theory (Denhardt, 2001; Di Francesco, 2015; Geva-May and Maslove, 2007) – has meant that industry demands have significant sway over teaching practice.

Greenwood and Eggins (1995: 147) attribute a blurring of the discipline’s definition, shifts in its focus, and transformation of its teaching practice, to changes in the public sector itself. Greenwood and Eggins quote Rhodes (1991: 533) in noting that the ‘real world of public administration has undergone a variety of upheavals…privatisation, the “new public management”, and cutbacks in public expenditure and public sector employment’. New Public Management, moreover, was both a cause and consequence of governments adopting greater market orientations and privatising ownership and provision of services to the private and non-profit sectors (Hajnal, 2015: 96; Robichau et al., 2015: 316). This has led to a blending of practices and norms, with government departments often adopting aspects of the institutional and work logics of the private sector (Knutsen, 2012; Oesch, 2006; Robichau et al., 2015).

These changes in higher education, in the public sector and in the identity of the discipline complicate the teaching of public policy. Universities have responded to the evolving demands from government, employers and students by seeking to build stronger ties with industry (Healy et al., 2014). These ties are often mutual, with industry engagement in the design and delivery of curricula, and to a lesser extent university involvement in the operations of relevant organisations (for example, academics having roles on advisory boards of relevant public or statutory organisations). Arguably, the principal objective behind universities engaging with industry is to enhance the employability of graduates through developing courses, including in public policy, that are responsive to employer needs (Papadopoulos et al., 2011: 10).¹

The concept of ‘employability’, however, as well as its worth as a primary aim of higher education, is contested. Fleming and Haigh (2017: 206) note that the ‘increasingly complex, dynamic, competitive and global’ future of work into which graduates will enter means that students need to ‘acquire capabilities beyond those that will ensure they are ready for work in current roles and environments’. Further, as Bennett (2016) argues, employability needs to be reconceptualised to emphasise ability – the ‘ability to find, create and sustain meaningful work across lengthening working lives and multiple work settings’. These concerns can be addressed through appropriately designed industry engagement that is sensitive not only to the immediate personnel needs of industry, but also the longer-term needs of graduates (Adams et al., 2015; Fleming and Haigh, 2017; Scott, 2013).

While industry engagement should be approached cautiously and critically by public policy teachers, it nevertheless holds the potential to enhance student learning outcomes and employability. Simultaneously, deeper and more meaningful consultation with practitioners is an avenue through which the broader unresolved questions of the public policy discipline might be effectively reckoned (Gibson and Deadrick, 2010). Healy et al. (2014) identify eight main types of university–industry engagement: collaboration in research and development, mobility of academics, mobility of students, commercialisation of research and development results, curriculum development and design, lifelong learning, entrepreneurship, and governance. Given the orientation of public policy toward the public sector, some of these forms of cooperation – such as commercialisation of research and development efforts – are less likely than others.

In teaching public policy, though, there are significant opportunities for cooperation with employers in curriculum design and delivery. For public sector or other industry representatives, this can involve a varying degree of input, from informal and ad hoc consultation through to co-designing curricula and delivering seminars or lectures (Papadopoulos et al., 2011: 14–15). For academic staff, there is the potential for short- or long-term collaboration with the public sector, as well as refinement and enhancement of curricula (Healy et al., 2014: 24–25). For students, university–industry engagement can underpin a wider strategy of work-integrated learning, as well as deliver benefits to learning and skill outcomes through course content more aligned with industry practice (Smith, 2012).

Escalating and oft-competing expectations of universities – from students, from industry and from governments – have resulted in demands for a simultaneously deepening and widening of curricula, for expansion alongside specialisation (Clark, 1998). This has resulted, Van Vught (2013: 25) argues, in ‘mission overload’, with a clear divide emerging between external expectations and what universities can feasibly achieve. A ‘multiplicity of accountabilities’ (Shay, 2016: 768) has amplified debates over what is more important in a curriculum: knowing, doing, or being (Barnett and Coate, 2005); educating the mind or practicing for a vocation (Nussbaum, 2010), cultivating human capabilities or fostering knowledgeable practice (Muller, 2015). After all, as Bernstein (1975: 85) contends, ‘curriculum defines what counts as valid knowledge’. Universities have increasingly turned toward industry engagement as a means by which to navigate these debates and respond to expanding expectations.

Graduate employability, though, has often been the stated primary focus in university engagement with industry on curriculum design and delivery. Yet despite its extensive practice, university–industry collaboration on curricula has received little scholarly consideration in the general literature, and even less attention in studies of teaching public policy. As Plewa et al. (2015: 37) explain, curriculum design entails ‘the design of university programs, courses and related content at all levels’, while curriculum delivery is ‘the delivery of courses and content to students via a large range of mechanisms, such as lectures, live projects, placements’ and other means.

Industry engagement on curriculum design and delivery thus potentially provides employers with significant input in defining what constitutes valid knowledge. The process of designing curricula encompasses, Shay (2016: 771) explains, ‘choices about selection, sequence, pacing and evaluation’ as knowledge is ‘decontextualized from its site of production…and recontextualised into a curriculum’. Selection involves, for instance, which disciplines (say, management or political science) might predominate in a public policy qualification, while sequence determines the balance and order of theory as against practical skills. Further, pacing refers to course credits; evaluation to assessment and the overall frameworks by which to judge success and competence (Bernstein, 2000; Shay, 2016).

Engaging with industry in these processes can significantly benefit student learning outcomes, teaching practice and the competitiveness and innovation of industry.² In teaching public policy, industry engagement additionally provides an avenue through which enduring debates within the field about identity and purpose might be navigated and resolved (Adams et al., 2015). On the other hand, some scholars have expressed concern over the capacity of industry to manipulate knowledge through curriculum interventions (Krimsky, 2003; Lehtimäki and Peltonen, 2013; Slaughter and Leslie, 1997). Others have raised different concerns, and it should nevertheless be recognised that, as Averch and Dluhy (1992: 548) argue:

Public administration and public policy programs both serve those in power; they are designed either to produce decisionmakers or advisers to decisionmakers. There are, however, many actors in the policy process who might need analysis but are not decisionmakers. Who serves their needs?

In furthering our understanding of university–industry collaboration in teaching public policy, then, there is a need to discuss not only how we might engage with industry, but precisely with whom we should be engaging. A first step in this process is to outline a strategic framework which helps to clarify the different modes, potential and risks associated with industry engagement.

Engaging with industry: A strategic framework

In this section, we introduce a strategic framework for understanding how policy teachers and academics might engage with ‘industry’, or more specifically the public sector, to inform the curriculum of public policy and related topics. As outlined above, there are a range of drivers that are placing increased pressure on universities to engage with industry. Here, we outline a framework which sets out to disaggregate what ‘engagement’ might mean, and the inherent strengths and issues that might entail from industry collaboration. We deem it a ‘strategic’ framework as we argue that engagement can entail a nuanced and wide range of activities and approaches, and we do not valorise any specific approach.

A framework for engagement with industry

Overall, the literature review and wider context helps shape understanding of why policy teachers may (or may not) want to engage more widely with stakeholders and the wider sector, and the relevant risks and opportunities posed by this. In this section, a potential framework for engagement is outlined. To proceed, we disaggregate some of the different elements that might constitute ‘engagement’ with the sector. The framework primarily is focussed on Australian public sector organisations, but clearly it can be expanded to include related sectors and areas. Broadly, we can consider the ‘who’, ‘why’ and ‘how’, along with the associated benefits and risks. We emphasise that our framework does not necessarily have a normative dimension – in that, whilst there may be benefits in engagement, we also remain critical and ambivalent about what that might entail.

‘Who’ to engage with

To proceed, we focus on ‘who’ to engage with in terms of the wider ‘industry’. We suggest the following different categories of people working within the public sector (see Table 2). These include HR managers, senior public servants in both domain-specific and central line agencies, more junior employees, and key representative agencies. The main issue here is that when advocates suggest that universities engage with industry, it is not always necessarily certain who these key figures might be. Moreover, as is clear from the detail in the table, there are strengths/limits in engaging any or all of these different types of industry links, and the different level and quality of insights that these range of actors might provide for engagement purposes. A key sector to potentially directly engage with is the range of professional actors, bodies and related institutions: in the Australian context, for example, the Public Sector Association (PSA), various state and federal bodies such as the Institute for Public Administration Australia (IPAA) and bespoke government agencies such as the Commissioner for Public Sector Employment.

Table 2.

Who to engage with.

Role	Comment
HR managers	This group might yield strong insights on recruitment practices, employability skills, etc. Less knowledge of specific policy skills knowledge.
Senior public servants (domain-specific)	Benefits of engagement – shedding insights on recent trends/issues in specific sector (health, etc.). Perhaps limits in generalisability – health to treasury, for example.
Senior public servants (central line agency)	Benefits – clear insights from central drivers of government oversight. Limits – less likely to shape views on service delivery, etc.
Junior public servants	Benefits – key insights on what the sector is like on recent entry, etc. Less knowledge of broader trends, etc.
Representative, professional, ‘peak’ bodies	Benefits – insights on wider trends and skills shortages, etc. Less direct experience likely.

‘What’ to engage on: Content and skills

There are a range of reasons for why policy teachers might seek to engage with industry and key stakeholders. Our focus is predominantly on the purposes of input into curriculum development and content, as well as the delivery of that content. If the driver is to ensure that the relevant skills and knowledge are taught, then we might disaggregate key elements of the curriculum into a number of core categories. Here, policy teachers and industry might well be seeking engagement around two broad themes – policy-specific content and more generic content. For policy-specific knowledge, we might broadly disaggregate this into four key dimensions (see Table 3). If engagement is characterised as a symbiotic process, then this will involve discussion and negotiation over areas such as appropriateness of content-specific knowledge, process aspects, and knowledge of institutional and related aspects of policy. Much of this might be seen as the ‘bread and butter’, or core modules we might expect to see in policy topics and courses, but the involvement with stakeholders might prove to be a useful way of ensuring relevance and so on.

Table 3.

Engaging on content.

Policy-specific	Generic
Domain-specific (health, education, etc.) Process-specific (evaluation, formulation, etc.) Systemic/institutional (role of the public sector) Relationship between theory and practice	Skills-based (communication, policy brief writing, critical thinking etc.) Research skills Employability (skills and knowledge to enhance employment chances)

For generic knowledge and skills, we might then classify them broadly as follows: first, those that encompass a broad set of common skills and knowledge expected of a policy graduate; second, a specific focus on research skills; and third, a focus on the specific set of skills that speak to the potential employability of the graduates. Whilst this table is far from exhaustive, it might help provide a useful framework for organising discussions on engagement and reflecting the views of what skills are needed in the sector.

‘How’ to engage: Different models of engagement

Clearly, there is no one set model of engagement, and this might be done in different ways. A key characteristic of engagement is to consider the timing and length of engagement, which might refer to either ongoing, episodic or one-off. We might then also characterise the depth of engagement sought, for example, a one-off discussion about skills, rather than a more in-depth course review (see Table 4). In this respect, we can disaggregate different dimensions of engagement, and policy teachers can adapt suitable strategies depending on their needs and resources.

Table 4.

Engaging with industry – time and level.

	Time commitment – high	Time commitment – low
Level of engagement – high	Course management committee/similar – ongoing and regular meetings with key stakeholders on course curriculum Course curriculum reviews – series of meetings to discuss and review curriculum content; more narrowly focussed than course review Accreditation – formal approval by industry body over course and topic design Establishing bespoke courses and providers: e.g. ANZOG	Course reviews (short time-limited reviews of degree courses with stakeholder involvement)
Level of engagement – low	Advisory working groups – ad hoc meetings to discuss matters of relevance, etc. Low level of engagement expected outside of the semi-regular meetings	Stakeholder forums – one-off meetings to consider skills, with little binding commitment Guest lectures, presentations – one-off lectures into courses to deliver specified content

It is worth noting that we resist placing normative assumptions against ‘high’ and ‘low’ levels of commitment and engagement. It is not necessarily the case that the deeper the engagement the stronger and more relevant the curriculum and graduate outcomes might become. Rather, this might better help shape understanding about what can be achieved in terms of engagement. Some of the common techniques and models are outlined below, but include approaches such as course reviews, working groups, stakeholder fora, accreditation processes and the like.

Overall, if we distil these composite parts of the engagement process into an over-arching framework, we might then present a stylized framework as follows (see Table 5):

Table 5.

Framework for engagement.

Who to engage with	Rationale	Depth of involvement	Risks/benefits
Sector-wide stakeholders (HR, key representative agencies) Public sector (senior, junior, central, domain)	Curriculum development and content Policy-specific Sector-generic	High/low time High/low engagement	New insights, stronger relevance, improved graduate outcomes Tokenism, unrepresentative, overly vocational

Discussion and conclusion

Despite the drivers for engagement, and the wider push for linkage with industry and other stakeholders, the aim of this article is to set out a practical, strategic framework for exploring what the different dimensions of engagement might look like. As we explore through the framework, there are also inherent risks and challenges in engaging with industry, and our approach is not predicated on the assumption that engagement is, in and of itself, a desirable goal. In some respects, there is a case that disengagement might be a suitable outcome. Instead, our aim is to articulate a more granulated understanding of how engagement might be conceptualised, and if adopted, help deepen understanding of its risks and benefits.

At the level of much of the ‘grey’ literature – such as the reports and related strategic plans by universities and industry, there is an assumption that all engagement is desirable and should be pursued. There is a tacit belief that input from key external employers and related organisations will enhance the teaching of public policy. Yet it is often unclear which specific groups should be engaged, or for what purposes. In the section on ‘who’ we might identify some evident benefits from some of the disaggregated groups and individuals within the public sector. Engagement specifically with HR professionals, and also figures from key bodies (e.g. the PSA or the IPAA) might shed highly useful insights about recruitment factors and employability skills and trends across the sector. These groups might give clear insights into specific skill sets that graduates might need to adapt and acquire during their tertiary education.

Yet we might expect some disjuncture between this group, and policy practitioners – especially those in domain-specific areas. We might also note that the insights from those based in line agencies might require different skill sets (coordination-related policy work, rather than, say, implementation skills). Engaging with specific groups of practitioners, for example a group of senior health policy managers, can pose a series of dilemmas. Engagement and consultation evoke contested ideas of ‘representation’, and we might well ask on what basis or authority do some industry individuals ‘speak for’ the wider sector. One risk is that not only do different agencies have roles that require different knowledge, skills and attributes, but the skills needed today may not reflect what is needed in the medium or long term.

Likewise, different drivers and rationales for engagement, especially on curriculum development and delivery, might also draw mixed results and a diversity of responses. First, given the diversity of policy work, a starting point is to identify some of the different elements to recognise multiplicity of what might constitute ‘policy work’ (see Table 3 above). A key tension will remain the balance between theoretical considerations and more applied elements of policy work. In many respects, the teaching of public policy is not a purely vocational vehicle for identifying ‘tick box’ skills for the public sector, and policy work is inherently complex (e.g. Veselý, 2017). Thus, what is more ‘relevant’ for the sector is necessarily contested and contingent on a range of factors.

Finally, it should be noted that there might well be risks from not engaging with the public sector and relevant stakeholders, and these include a lack of relevance or not paying heed to broader changes in the public sector. Moreover, there are wider debates about the appropriateness of some materials being used, not least the dominance of The Australian Policy Handbook as a feature of policy teaching in Australia. A focus on a process model of policy, whilst potentially useful as a heuristic – clearly reflected in sales and usage – raises broader issues about more theoretical understanding of policy, and an underlying tendency to view policy as top-down and rationalistic in character.

In sum, there is a broader set of risks inherent in wider engagement, including tokenism, too overt a focus on producing ‘copy-cat’ policy workers, and the risks inherent in amplifying views from ‘unrepresentative’ stakeholders and colleagues in the public sector, however well-intentioned their advice and insights might well be. The framework outlined here provides a strategic mechanism for universities, practitioners, teachers of public policy and ‘industry’ to further explore the means of engagement, and the underpinning risks, challenges and benefits.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Rob Manwaring

Notes

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