Who teaches future public administrators? Faculty profiles across Chilean Universities and implications for public administration as a field

This article examines the profiles of academics participating in undergraduate programs in public administration education in Chile, focusing on how classic tensions in the field—between teaching and research, theory and practice, and disciplinary identity and interdisciplinarity—manifest empirically. Drawing on an original dataset of 168 academics from 19 universities, the study systematizes educational backgrounds, scientific productivity, and participation in competitive research. Findings show limited research engagement overall: fewer than one quarter publish on disciplinary public administration topics, most faculties lack specialized PA training, and externally funded projects are infrequent and concentrated in a small number of institutions. The analysis identifies three faculty profiles—disciplinary, interdisciplinary and others (academics without any publications)—and shows that their distribution varies sharply by institutional type. Non-traditional universities are dominated by professors without publications (72%) and exhibit a very low share of disciplinary researchers (8%), whereas traditional universities show a more balanced profile mix and concentrate most disciplinary researchers (90%) and research awards. These patterns suggest that rapid program expansion has outpaced disciplinary consolidation, reinforcing institutional stratification and limiting the system-wide capacity to integrate teaching, research, and professional identity.