Compatibility of the Content of Bachelor Programs in Public Administration with the Needs of Good Governance - A Comparison : EU-US

Higher education in most European states is subject to a complex process of adaptation to the requirements formulated by Bologna process. For some states, such as Romania, this process assumes core restructuring of the content, aimed to its compatibility with that from prestigious European universities. For education in public administration, the developments have a specific character, benefiting of European mechanisms of evaluation, aimed to describe the degree of compatibility. One of the mechanisms is provided by the European Association for Public Administration Accreditation, taking into consideration complex evaluation standards and criteria in view of accreditation. Multidisciplinarity represents one of the important standards. Based on the general context of developing the programs in public administration, we may speak about Europeanization of their content; Europeanization reveals exactly the degree of absorption of the European values specific for the area of public administration in national higher education institutions. The Europeanization process represents a complex process that can cover several years and means step by step approaches by which the structure and content of the above programs should be convergent. In this context, the current paper aims a comparative analysis, based on statistic methods, providing an image about the current level of Europeanization of the content of programs in public administration between various universities in Romania, states in Central and Eastern Europe recently accessed into the European Union and developed countries in the European Union. Based the research methodology and using NASPA standards, our analysis will include American universities that are developing programs in public administration. Thus, the structure of the paper will comprise: -General framework for developing the European higher education after signing Bologna Declaration. -Research methodology based on EAPAA standards. -Presenting the results of the statistic analysis for 10 universities in Romania, 4 universities in Central and Eastern Europe and 4 universities in European developed states. -Comparing the results with those from 3-4 American universities and describing the relevant conclusions from the perspective of the content specific for governance issue. The paper uses information and reports of European and American universities about the content and development of programs in public administration as well as own studies of the authors