What is public administration?

What are the best practices for weeding out candidates for public administration?

• There is undoubtedly an informal cultural standard to be met, as governments don't want just anyone with a public administration degree overseeing operations and planning budgets. A moral hazard is how universities are incentivized to welcome into their public administration degree programs anyone who has decent grades, above-average GRE scores, and enough money to pay tuition. This means a significant portion of MPA graduates and similar degree holders end up nominally qualified to enter the field of public administration but shut out anyway; determining who wins and who loses remains more of an art, but I'm sure there are best practices. How have public managers effectively determined which academically capable graduates have no future in public administration careers?

• Answer:

  Work ethics is the answer in my opinion. As a hiring manager, I don't care what degrees you have, but are you capable of working, showing up for work, getting your work done, and learning to take on new tasks.