The students were not the only ones who gained from these special events. Often, the government official would bare his most difficult problems to the seminar, in the hope that some bright young man could apply some theory and come up with an answer he had been too harried to discover. It is said that Leon Henderson found solutions to some of the intricacies of price controls in the Littauer Lounge.

Case Studies

During the war, former professor of Government E. Pendleton Herring began to gather studies of actual administrational problems in order to construct a new Littauer course. Whipped into shape by 1946, the course, Public Administration and Public Policy, became the model for public service schools throughout the country. Its case methods dropped students into an actual agency, where, through reading, they fought dogfights with pressure groups and prayed for nickels from Congress, much like real administrators. Many government agencies winced when they saw their most bitter struggles and biggest botches printed up as case studies, but they soon realized that there was no better way to get across the facts of governmental life. Everybody at Littauer now takes this case study course.

Many men on the Littauer "faculty" wish the student body could have been constructed as neatly as some of the seminars. But its development was haphazard. At first, there were 30 or so Littauer and Administration fellows, who shared their seminars with Arts and Sciences graduate students. When the war came, Littauer watched most of its Fellowship material quickly drafted. Some suggested the school close its doors for the duration, and others toyed with the ideas of turning Littauer into a military training schol. But Dean Williams was stubbornly determined to keep his school civilian. In a sudden and drastic change in admissions policy, Williams looked abroad and convinced South American governments to send their bright young men to Littauer. As a result, the School was half Latin American for the duration.

Almost a tidal wave of applications engulfed the school after 1945. They were from vets but not those looking for a "cram course." Attracted by the educational benefits of the GI Bill of Rights, they wanted as much schooling as they could get. By 1946, only ten Littauer students were out for the original, one year Master of Public Administration de- gree. The rest were in four or five-year programs for Arts and Sciences doctors' degrees. Although they all had some interest in government, many had no intention of going into public service. Thus, the original conception of the Littauer student body was completely changed. It has never been quite the same since.

Every year since 1946, the School's official report has pleasantly speculated on cutting down the student body. But every year, the applications have increased. Right now, the Admissions Committee must reject three men for every one it accepts.

Present Dean Mason has abandoned William's hope that the school could return to its original character. He is convinced that Littauer can be just as useful to the government and the University if it continues to pool its courses and students with the rest of the University. "After all," Mason says, "public administration schools are only one of the roads into the public service. And the government could use people with a broader background in the social sciences."

Opposite Approach

Many of Littauer's students, and some of its borrowed "faculty" have suggested limiting the school to a master's degree program, with a complete turnover of students every year. But Mason takes the opposite approach. He would broaden the program still further. Already, he has created seminars that relate administration to law and business, and are taught by faculty members of those schools.

But the character of the school has never been as consistent, or produced as much agreement, as its results. While the debate over the kind of courses and students Littauer should have goes on, the controversy over its approach to the field of public administration has ended. The school's growing body of Washington alumni have enthusiastically endorsed its broader approach toward public administration as the "most useful possible" for their present work.

Thus, with the essential purpose of the Littauer revolution having succeeded, the revolutionists have only the details to quibble about. No matter how mysteriously it develops in the future, the school in the sombre, grey structure on Kirkland Street has established itself as the best public administration school in the country