This publication contains six selected papers from the 30th Anniversary Meeting of the University Council for Educational Administrators (UCEA) in the fall of 1987. The first article, by John A. Thompson discusses problems associated with implementing the agenda of the Holmes Group report in decentralizing the control of schools. Leslie, Snyder, and Giddis, in the second paper, discuss the changes in Florida's administrator preparation programs that delegate virtually all responsibility for training school principals to school districts. In the third study, Pohland, Milstein, Schilling, and Tonigan also take a state level perspective in discussing how the reform climate of the eighties has affected the preparation program at the University of New Mexico. They focus on the flaws inherent in the technical and corporate models of the educational administrator that are implied in the reform movement. Shapiro, in the fourth study, assesses and contrasts two curricular models: the medical model (oriented toward the clinical experience) and an alternative conceptual model that he labels the "artificial science" approach. The last two papers propose shifts in the curricular orientations of preparation programs. Colleen S. Bell argues that managerial instruction attempting to simplify and homogenize organizational experience ill-prepares students for the real life of administration, while Tetenbaum and Mulkeen review gender-based studies that focus on the difference in world view of men and women and differences in the way men and women approach administrative tasks. A bibiliography is included. (TE)