IMPROVING THE UNIVERSITY'S PERFORMANCE IN PUBLIC POLICY EDUCATION

scientific effort people have learned how to improve continuously the
performance of the firm.

Why could not similar scientific attention be directed to the in-
stitutional system so that its performance can be regularly and con-
tinuously improved? Obsolescence within the firm is a cost and when
discovered is no longer tolerated. Likewise obsolescence in the in-
stitutional system is a cost and is borne by someone or by groups of
people. This cost may show up as a gross social welfare problem such
as poverty, or pollution, or crime, or overpopulation. Yet people know
so little about their institutional systems whose performance was in-
tended to avoid these ills, that they search for hidden villains, blame
their elders, or rebel against the system. There is no lack of reformers.

One distinction between improving the performance of the firm
and that of the institutional system must be noted. Each is a human
invention subject to human decision, and the wisdom of each such
decision depends upon the supply and quality of relevant knowledge;
in the firm’s instance relatively few decision makers are needed—
sometimes one, but in the institution’s case a larger number of public
decision makers are involved. This is where the ball game is when it
comes to education for public decision making. Categorically there
are three elements to that public : the professional establishment which
operates the system, the users of the system, and the financial sup-
porters of the system. These elements may be either one and the same
or separate, as with the local school where decision elements are the
faculty, the students, and the taxpayers, respectively.

The big problems of our time, that solved or unsolved will have
the most impact on our lives in the balance of this century, are
essentially political in nature. They are political in the sense that the
people of the country must come to terms with problems that affect
individuals but which individuals cannot control. Control can be
gained only through the public decision-making process. People in
society thus have to depend on some systematic means by which they
can come to know the world, the developmental forces, and the ques-
tions on which consensus must be reached.

GETTING THERE FROM HERE

The university needs the ability to create the unique research
enterprises and the educational delivery systems which enable our
citizens to comprehend, manage, and rationalize contemporary so-
ciety. We once thought that if the people were provided an adequate
means to improve the economic performance of firms, the resulting
increase in labor productivity and income would raise the level of Iiv-
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