The history of undergraduate education in Public Administration in Brazil unfortunately have a small amount of descriptive studies and analytical investigations of the subject, inspite of the thesis of Fischer (1984), Coelho (2006), Nicolini (2007) and few articles or research reports. The objetive of this paper is both to propose a timeline for such education in Brazil as contributing to the description and analysis of one of its cycles. Methodologically, the article reviews those works that directly and indirectly address the issue and analyzes the laws and opinions on undergraduate teaching in Public Administration. It also considers the pedagogical projects and discussion texts of educational institutions offering Public Administration this courses at that time. There have been identified three cycles of teaching in Public Administration: the first cycle shows the rise of undergraduate education in public administration between 1952 and 1965. The second cycle focuses on the peak and fall of undergraduate education in the period between 1966 and 1982, in which this paper focuses. The third cycle shows a (re)encouragement in the area when new training proposals emerge in the years 1983 to 1994. The findings show the North American influence in the second cycle, the indefinition between the fields of public administration and business administration, the impetus given to business administrators by Decreto Lei 200 and the discouragement of teaching Public Administration because of national curricula enforcement and reducing labor market for public administrators.
Public Administration; Teaching; Undergraduate; History
