A Masters degree and Me

For the gentle readers who don't know where Chris is heading off to for the next year or so, I'll be doing a Masters in Public Administration at the University of Michigan for about a year or so. (Actually 10 months)

Why a Masters, and in the US at that? I needed an opportunity to recharge my thinking and my intellect. One of the risks of working long term in the public sector is the slow evolution (or devolution) of the individual thinking process into the organization's thinking process. Moreover, my work (in IRIN) over the past 3 years was solutioning towards my division's business needs. When your parameters are so clearly defined, it's difficult to explore new horizons of thinking.

I guess I could say that I felt stupider as the years went by and needed a change. I'm not interested in a certificate or putting the alphabet soup on the business card. I find the whole business of promoting people based on their certificates to be mildly offensive, to say the least. I want to do a Masters in the US because the people there think differently. Their (and I mean students and professors) values are not our values, and I want to know how and why the different peoples of the world think they do. And I want to be challenged in the way I think, in the ideas and values I hold dear. That, to me, is the most important aspect of a graduate education. Comments from the floor are welcome =)

The second question: Why Public Admin? will be answered in a subsequent post. It's a little more involved than this one, so I'd like the time to formulate it.

Oh, and if you need my MSN contact details, it's wulfheim at hotmail dot com. Just a little precaution against the email farming bots.