Faculty are hired and promoted on the basis of research, teaching, and service. A doctoral degree (Ph.D. or D.P.A.) normally teaches and certifies skills in the first of these, but despite the evidence that teaching skills are not innate or acquired by luck, it is commonly groused that graduate programs train their candidates neither to teach, nor to design a course. This situation needs to be addressed by empirical research [Deneef, Goodwin, and McCrate, 1989] and in APPAM doctoral programs [O'Hare, 1996].
A system that spends little formal time on pedagogy evolves some sort of apprenticeship system. Candidates who aspire to teaching in higher education are told to observe, then copy and emulate the methods and styles of professors they find to be excellent. Often graduate student teaching assistants work with a professor to guide them in their teaching where their responsibilities may vary from grading papers to being entirely responsible for the course, or something in-between. This may or may not result in a good learning experience for the graduate student-teacher or a decent course for the enrolled students. In graduate-only departments, opportunities to learn by doing may be quite limited, unless the program allows graduate students to teach each other.
Coming from this background of minimal preparation, a new faculty member may welcome a systematic approach to planning courses. One part of public administration curricula that stresses planning is policy courses, and analogies to this problem-oriented process provide a framework for preparing to teach courses.