Rice (2004, pp. 153-154) makes a similar point by noting that “the teaching of social
equity and diversity must be included in curricular and coursework in public
administration education . . . to be more relevant to contemporary students and a
concentrated effort must be made to provide students with a racially and ethnically
“diverse faculty.” Yet, a racially and ethnically diverse public administration faculty
may be very difficult to achieve. Farmbry’s (2005) survey findings from thirteen
directors of university academic public administration programs in California
acknowledge the saliency of this problem. This lack of diverse faculty may well have a
bearing on the scarcity of focus on the topics of social equity, diversity, and cultural
competency in public administration education. The problem is exacerbated further by
the fact that the major textbooks in the field of public administration provide little or
no coverage on cultural competency or equity measures (Svara and Brunet, 2004).