Preparing future leaders

I was wandering through the blogosphere and I bumped into Steven Schwartz (vice chancellor of Macquarie University) and his blog where he riffs on an article I did for the Times Higher Education a little while ago. The article is a discussion of the emergence of Masters in Public Policy in the UK, specifically at Oxford and Cambridge, asking how they need to prepare public leaders. 


In Steven's blog post he appears to not believe that such vocational training is useful, saying 

As with the study of medicine and most other professional degrees, it's highly likely that these new vocational political skills will be obsolete shortly after graduation. And then where will we be?

Obviously I'm biased - I have an MPP. But here are a few points that I think should be taken on board before we all go mad over this kind of thing. 


1. We want people with diverse backgrounds in public leadership, no one said an MPP or anything like it was a silver bullet or for everyone.
2. This is about more than politicians, many other folks from civil servants, to academics, business managers and on to trade union representatives all are part of public leadership and public change. 
3. Anything that helps future leaders prepare for complexity, speed and massively competing interests helps and if that is time spent in industry or doing an MPP that's fine by me. 


Just out of interest what does Steven's comment say about the many vocationally oriented courses offered at Macquarie? 


Best

Finbarr