Someone in the comment thread for the post on national service mentioned the idea of a US Public Service Academy. It would be something like the military academies, except for the civilian jobs the government needs: "The Public Service Academy will provide a rigorous undergraduate education followed by five years of civilian service to the country." I'd heard this proposal before, and it sounded like a good idea to me then and still sounds like a good idea to me now. Maintaining a high-quality civil service is absolutely vital to our country's future, and this seems like one useful way to accomplish that.
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A Public Service Academy?
03 Jul 2008 11:12 am
Comments (58)
What skills are specific to public service that you couldn't get in a standard university? Seriously, the last thing we need is for people to learn out to be bureaucrats.
It would be pretty difficult to keep the school from becoming overly politicized, though I think it's been managed with say, the diplomacy school run by the State Department. If it can fly somewhat under the Executive radar, with a couple structures in place to ensure autonomy for the curriculum creators, it could be pretty great.
Or hell, offer something like ROTC, complete with interesting summer internships for good students looking to go to college and then enter the civil service.
No no no... I could see something like this ending up as the École Nationale d'Administration, where you basically have to graduate from the institute to lead the country.
If something like this were to be done, I like James' idea and perhaps expand this program to many state universities, to allow many students of all groups to be involved.
I agree, it'll become a political ideology school if it is a single institution.
Instead, you need to let it be a program in lots of other institutions, like ROTC.
Furthermore, it needs an element of physical sacrifice. That is how you keep the 'players' out. The military and Peace Corps both have physical deprivation as part of the package, and that is what causes the self-selection of people with 'enlightened' motives.
If it can fly somewhat under the Executive radar, with a couple structures in place to ensure autonomy for the curriculum creators, it could be pretty great.
Wow...Bush still has six months, the election is far from settled, and people are ALREADY eager to reingratiate themselves with the almighty Executive? Or is the assumption that Obama is going to lead us from now until the rapture?
Isn't this something like the grand-est of the grandes ecoles in France, the Ecole National D'Administration (ENA). Graduates of ENA, and I think there are only about 50 a year, automatically become high ranking civil servants, and eventually become the deputy Ministers. I am not even ertain if you CAN be a top civil servant in France without going through ENA.
Obvioulsy the main drawback is that if all your top civil servants train at the same school, they all learn the same patterns and approaches to problems.
Well, honestly, since all of those Masters in Public Administration and Masters in Public Policy programs seem to only exist to separate well-meaning people from their hard-earned money, I think it might be a good idea to have a university that provides these programs for free for people who have the bad sense to pursue those careers.
Plus, it might help fill those administrative jobs with people who want to be there rather than forcing agencies to scour the country in search of people who figure, "eh, it seems like a decent, stable job."
What would be the point of it? The country already has multiple high-quality graduate-level public policy and public administration programs. This seems potentially redundant.
Why does it sound like a good idea exactly? We have lots of public universities. The ranges of expertise in civil service careers are much greater than those typical West Point grads are required to show. The dominance of West Point grads in higher levels of Army isn't something we particularly want to recapitulate in the civil service, is it? And so on.
What matters is that they must have cool uniforms.
The Washington Monthly actually had an piece a number of years ago suggesting that West Point, Annapolis, be closed in favor of ROTC programs.
No no no. It's been terrible for France.
Now, lavish federal funding for public affairs departments at universities nationwide, that's a great idea. Especially in the red states, which might blue them up a bit. I think Drezner's been pushing that too.
This seems silly. We have lots of good colleges and universities. What we really need to do is improve civil service pay so that qualified people see civil service as a viable alternative to the private sector. As it stands now, the only government agencies that attract the best and brightest are the elite branches with some cache (State, CIA, SEC which has pay parity btw). What you don't see are highly qualified people going to places like HUD or the Department of Edcuation, or Interior. We don't need some sort of federal university for bureaucrats. We need to make those jobs more attractive.
Public Service Academy...sounds like Liberty University to me.
Before having a civil servant service university, we might want to commit to hire actual civil servants. Many of the traditional entry level civil servant positions seem now to be filled by contractors.
I think this is an intriguing idea. As a young college grad and a member of the federal civil service in DC, I have I guess three main comments:
1 -- to get a civil service job in DC right out of school there are a # of transcript requirements that I can see being a precursor to how a school like this would be graduate its students. ie we already have a "sort-of" standard for civil service jobs for young folks
2 -- this would be a good way to separate the men from the boys, so to speak. if you are in it for the long haul, you would get the national public service education and have the advantage of getting a leg up in the service (not a grunt job at first, but a little higher, like what a M.A. candidate or grad would get right out of that program)
3 -- I don't now how on board I could be with the whole lack of new blood/ideas thing. I currenty appreciate the idea that you can work your way up from a variety of places to attain high level positions in the govt.
Point being, I don't know !
The problem with large scale public service programs is that most young people lack the skills and/or enthusiasm to actually be of service to our nation. In terms of bang for buck, we'd be much better off funding competitive public service sabbaticals for established professionals or expanding the meager existing public service programs.
As for the Public Service Academy, how many federal, state, and local job openings are there annually that are looking to hire recent college undergrads? Is there really a shortage of well-qualified people to work in civilian government jobs?
Since the Civil Service exam was abolished by Carter and the actual hiring of high IQ people (or really any objective criteria that did not include diversity manipulation) would necessarily involve politically controversial discrepancies (whether racial or otherwise), this sounds like an idea that would result in a place like the post-1960s CCNY training the nation's future high bureaucrats. I am unsure how this would help a federal bureaucracy that is not exactly a high scoring paradise of competency as it is...
This is the lizard brain of the liberal. Behold the tragic outcome of a Harvard philosophy degree- Matt, with all the gravity of a hip young person at a libertarian cocktail party, espousing a national university for bureaucrats without giving it a moments thought.
If he had, he would have realized that we have the land-grant universities, virtual laboratories of bureaucracy, amply endowed by the public over many decades, and yet increasingly unaffordable.
If there is any shortage of graduates, cut the tuition. It's not like we have a shortage of people.
As others have mentioned, there are lots of excellent public policy schools. The only bit of merit this proposal has is a mechanism to get people to commit to civil service. There are probably better ways to do that, such as providing grants which revert to loans. Also, it's probably much higher-leverage to do that at the Master's degree level--take an MPP program, paid for by the government, and commit to x years of service or you have to pay it back. You get the advantage that the best MPP programs are highly selective. The only difficulty would be deciding which programs to allow. If you disallowed a hypothetical Patrick Henry Jesus-based MPP, you'd get howls from the right.
By the way, William -- where on earth do you get the idea that "most young people lack the skills an/or enthusiasm to actually be of service to our nation".
I would take your posturing away from here or at least find a poll that shows that a majority of young folks couldn't or don't want to do something good for this country.
So many more of my friends and acquaintances in their twenties want to do just that: something good for their country. That's why so many of them are working non-profits, Ameri-corps type jobs, and getting involved in record numbers.
Give us the skills, and believe in us, and we will make this a better country than it's been for the past 8 years.
Spectacularly bad idea. As others have noted, it would simply become a civil service version of West Point, or an American version of the French ecoles system, which has proven disastrous to that nation. Total and complete ossification of thinking, and a whole lot of political indoctrination to boot. Can you imagine the never-ending ideological wars on Capitol Hill over the staff and curriculum of such a school? If the idea is to make a career in public service more attractive to young people and those with established careers, far better to find ways to make existing public policy schools in the universities more affordable, and boost salaries to attract seasoned professionals.
The problem is not a lack of capable and qualified civil servants, it is the expansion of the ranks of appointed political hacks, not just at the top, but increasingly lower into what should be the professional services. I've seen it first hand in State government, and know plenty of folks in Fed jobs who say the same thing. Waaay too many heck-of-a-job-Brownies in deputy and administrator level management positions.
-J
The other major problem with finding qualified young candidates for Federal civil service jobs is the incredibly long lead time - on the order of six months or more for most positions. Are you going to take a joe job until an unsure thing comes through, or are you going to start looking for real work and earning the money commensurate to your skill level. It's even worse when you look at the departments with cache, like CIA or State - especially the latter, where it's not unheard-of for it to take two years from taking the test to starting the initial training class. Incidentally, if you had to pick the two agencies where morale was completely poisonous right now, State and CIA would be at the top of anyone's list.
that's why so many of them are working in non-profts
That only points out that they have a naive desire to "do something." It doesn't mean they have the skills or education to do anything useful. And even worse, they probably took out a lot of loans to get the education required to get such a poor-paying job, which means they're probably not very financially astute, either.
What Matt is awkwardly trying to propose is a "professional" civil service-- the sort of thing that is regarded as being performed by a well-paid, highly educated professional doing specialized work, rather than a field dominated by thousands of middle-management-type administrators. Some kind of strict, tight gateway to good civil service jobs requiring serious expertise would cut down on the number of hacks being sent into the pipeline, as well.
I'm not sure, however, that a "civil service academy" in the military academy model is the way to do this. The Foreign Service seems to handle this pretty well, though, except that, as far as I can tell, being in the Foreign Service only means that you get a low-rung job which might allow you to start doing some interesting policy work a decade or two down the line.
What this idea also fails to recognize is that graduates from the service academies (or ROTC, or, in most cases, OCS) are loads, not sources for the first 3 years or so. An officer doesn't really start earing his/her keep until reaching the O-2 rank, and is only a complete asset to the unit when they reach O-3. This is also why there is a dramatic pay increase between the O-3 at 4 and the O-3 at 6 (and another for O-4 at 8).
Dumb idea.
Although I now teach HS science, I worked 10 years for a Federal environmental agency. The current system in which students attend a wide variety of different institutions around the country and come into government from a wide variety of backgrounds is far superior.
In any event, there are few pure policy or administrative jobs in the government. Most government workers have ordinary professions: Accountants, engineers, programmers, web designers, scientists, attorneys, police officers, etc, etc. Educating a few elite bureaucrats at some sort of national service academy would do nothing to solve the issue of manpower shortages in the ranks of more mundane federal jobs throughout the hinterlands.
Hold on a minute. I don't think most of the folks who have posted comments to Matt's blog entry have taken time to read the proposal for the U.S. Public Service Academy. If you had read the proposal, you would knonw that the Academy will be anything but the École Nationale d'Administration. If you had read the proposal, you would know the Academy will not be producing pencil-pushing bureaucrats.
To the contrary, the Academy will graduate smart, capable young people who are willing to go anywhere to do whatever their country needs them to do. That means teaching in classrooms without teachers and patrolling the streets in communities without enough police officers. We face massive shortages in so many areas, and the fact that so many people have posted comments that demean civil service is one reason why those shortages exist -- we tell people that serving their country in the government is not honorable.
We need to change that mindset. One way to do that is to build a school that is unlike any campus in America; one that focuses on leadership and public service.
I really encourage all of you go to the website -- www.uspublicserviceacademy.org -- and read the proposal before you form your opinion about this bipartisan idea that has captured the attention of people from all parts of the political spectrum.
This is a great idea that will be the next generation's Peace Corps.
Shawn Raymond
Dumb idea.
Although I now teach HS science, I worked 10 years for a Federal environmental agency. The current system in which students attend a wide variety of different institutions around the country and come into government from a wide variety of backgrounds is far superior.
In any event, there are few pure policy or administrative jobs in the government. Most government workers have ordinary professions: Accountants, engineers, programmers, web designers, scientists, attorneys, police officers, etc, etc. Educating a few elite bureaucrats at some sort of national service academy would do nothing to solve the issue of manpower shortages in the ranks of more mundane federal jobs throughout the hinterlands.
Shawn, now that I read it, the thing sounds like an even worse idea.
If you want to be a park ranger, apply to be a park ranger. If you want to be a police officer, sign up to be a police officer. If you want more people to take these jobs in underserved areas, create an incentive system for promising college students around the country to take them (loan forgiveness, graduate school scholarships, etc). There's no reason to create a university for the specific purpose of serving as a feeder for low-rung jobs that just happen to be in the public sector. There's a reason that the Peace Corps recruits qualified college graduates with the right skills and/or give people the necessary training rather than establishing a "Peace Corps Academy."
Tyro,
We have massive shortages of important public service jobs, such as police officers. Indeed, 8 out of 10 law enforcement agencies in the country can't fill their needs with enough qualified applicants. The same holds true for teachers and so many other civil service positions. Part of the reason for the shortage is that young people are told that these are, as you call them, "low-rung jobs" -- which insinuates that the best and brightest in our country are too good to do this work. That's the absolute wrong message to send to young people. We instead need to let them know that these jobs are important, and that's its every bit as patriotic to be a police officer or teacher as it is to serve in the military.
I think scholarships are a terrific way to try to get more people into these positions. But scholarships don't capture the imagination of young leaders to serve -- which helps explain why we have the public service shortages we do. For its part, the Academy will have recruiters in every high school in America talking about a school whose only focus is developing leaders for public sector service. And unlike scholarships, the Academy will help change how young Americans perceive, prepare for, and pursue public sector service.
Tyro,
We have massive shortages of important public service jobs, such as police officers. Indeed, 8 out of 10 law enforcement agencies in the country can't fill their needs with enough qualified applicants. The same holds true for teachers and so many other civil service positions. Part of the reason for the shortage is that young people are told that these are, as you call them, "low-rung jobs" -- which insinuates that the best and brightest in our country are too good to do this work. That's the absolute wrong message to send to young people. We instead need to let them know that these jobs are important, and that's its every bit as patriotic to be a police officer or teacher as it is to serve in the military.
I think scholarships are a terrific way to try to get more people into these positions. But scholarships don't capture the imagination of young leaders to serve -- which helps explain why we have the public service shortages we do. For its part, the Academy will have recruiters in every high school in America talking about a school whose only focus is developing leaders for public sector service. And unlike scholarships, the Academy will help change how young Americans perceive, prepare for, and pursue public sector service.
The way we're going a new Civilian Conservation Corps will be more in order.
Great Idea!
As a recent High School student I felt the stress and pressure of trying to find "the right college". Unfortunately, I, like many, do not have a money tree growing in my backyard and finances became quite an issue. Free education in return for a committment into the field I desire yet at the same time achieving whatever degree I desire sounds absoulutely wonderful! If this Academy had been installed when I was graduating High School I definitely would have applied. This academy appears to be more of a solution, than a problem, to the bureaucratic flood that seems to dominate within the public service field.
By using techniques themed off those of West Point I truly believe the academy will graduate students who have a true desire and passion to serve their country within the public service field.
Tyro,
Would you mind expanding on your negative opinion of MPA/MPP degrees? Are they useless?
I'm considering grad school for those programs, but I'm wavering on their usefulness and the cost/benefits.
Waingro- Yes, they are very useful. I currently work for the Environmental Protection Agency and most of the people here have MPA/MPP degrees and said they needed them to get the job and be able to advance in it. The same seems to be true in other public sector jobs.
Kent-your agrumentation lacks any warrants at all. Simply saying "the current system is far superior" is a claim that lacks any substantive reasoning for preferring the status quo. In fact the current system doesn't work. Lets use your own analysis: "most government officials are normal people, attorneys, etc". Okay. Granted. Look beyond that though. 80 percent of Harvard's JD graduates enter the private sector, EVEN with their new program that waives the third years tuition if they enter the public sector. Columbia's School of Public Affairs has seen a 50% drop of students pursuing public sector jobs...and the school is meant for those students! Why is this? Under the current system they are being priced out of the public sector. The US Public Service Academy solves this by subsidizing their education.
You then continue to make another false claim, which is that "there are few policy or admin. jobs in the government". Define "pure policy". Even without your defintion your analysis is still fatally flawed-students at the USPSA, or even current institutions SPECIALIZE because there is a need for specialized jobs which aren't "pure policy". The problem with the status quo is these specialized students are snapped up by the private sector.
Waingro- Yes, they are very useful. I currently work for the Environmental Protection Agency and most of the people here have MPA/MPP degrees and said they needed them to get the job and be able to advance in it. The same seems to be true in other public sector jobs.
Kent-your agrumentation lacks any warrants at all. Simply saying "the current system is far superior" is a claim that lacks any substantive reasoning for preferring the status quo. In fact the current system doesn't work. Lets use your own analysis: "most government officials are normal people, attorneys, etc". Okay. Granted. Look beyond that though. 80 percent of Harvard's JD graduates enter the private sector, EVEN with their new program that waives the third years tuition if they enter the public sector. Columbia's School of Public Affairs has seen a 50% drop of students pursuing public sector jobs...and the school is meant for those students! Why is this? Under the current system they are being priced out of the public sector. The US Public Service Academy solves this by subsidizing their education.
You then continue to make another false claim, which is that "there are few policy or admin. jobs in the government". Define "pure policy". Even without your defintion your analysis is still fatally flawed-students at the USPSA, or even current institutions SPECIALIZE because there is a need for specialized jobs which aren't "pure policy". The problem with the status quo is these specialized students are snapped up by the private sector.
A few comments or clarifications:
Those who argue that the Public Service Academy will be like the ENA of France are mistaken for numerous reasons. The ENA was created because of French political volatility (they are now on the 5th Republic) in order to create stability underneath political change. The French civil service is much stronger than the American civil service and therefore works well for France, even though it has numerous disadvantages. In the United States we wanted to make the civil service amenable to executive leadership, at least since the 70s. Our political situation is therefore different from France since all cabinet level and many sub-cabinet positions are appointed, allowing for more flexibility. Second as one post noted the ENA only graduates about 50 students a year; that is not very many, the current Presidential Management Fellows program, a program that seeks to accomplish many of the same goals of the ENA enrolls hundreds per year, and we have a smaller civil service than France. The French analogy is also misguided because in France, while it is true that most top civil servants graduated from the ENA, there are only a few paths to leadership positions. In the United States this is NOT true. We have many fine undergraduate and graduate institutions, as well as a vibrant business and non-profit sector, that government often taps. The American pool is far more diverse than the French pond. Next, the ENA is a graduate institution that should be considered as a finishing school. The PSA will be an undergraduate institution.In sum, there are so many situational differences between the US and France that the ENA analogy just doesn't hold water.
For those who are concerned that if we create the PSA too many of our public leaders will come from the same source they should take a look at the biographies of those in government now. THEY ALREADY COME FROM ONE OR TWO SCHOOLS, Yale and Harvard, or if you are baby Bush you come from both, but if you are Clinton, or Obama, or even daddy Bush, or Kennedy, or FDR, or Teddy, then sadly you come from just one. The PSA might actually be a source of diversity!
It should also be noted that West Point graduates more than a thousand students a year, there are more than three hundred thousand people in the United States military; the PSA will graduate less than one thousand students a year and there are more than 2 million people in the Civil Service. 70,000 people work for the Department of the Interior alone. The PSA will hardly graduate enough people to dominate the Federal Government. It will graduate and educate enough to fill places of important need.
Those who argue for scholarships like ROTC have their heart in the right place but undervalue the importance of a service culture, one that forms the students mindsets. A casual reader of the NYT, or anyone that has attended an elite east coast school as I did, will know that they do not cultivate a culture of civic duty. As the NYT ran the other week students at Harvard overwhelmingly choose lucrative jobs in banking rather than in the public sector. Moreover, numbers of students who go into the public sector are deceiving because the public sector includes lobbying firms and non-profits. One might think that a huge number of graduates from the Georgetown Public Policy school will work for the government. Wrong. Less than 20 percent do, though most go into the "public sector." What about Princeton or Harvard. Even less. Ask them for their numbers and they won't give them to you because they are ashamed about it. Even the family that gave money for the Princeton school of public service want their money back because the students aren't going into public service! We need the Public Service Academy because it will do something essentially different than our current universities. Offering incentives to lure top students into government is good but it is only a half-hearted solution.
Those who think this is a "spectacularly bad idea" or "simply dumb" have not sufficiently thought about what is particular to the American political system, the problems that currently face the national civil service, the reasons why students now do not enter government service, and the proper methods by which that problem can be fixed by a long term solution.
Tyro-Your alternative to the US Public Service Academy (USPSA) sounds attractive but isn't for a variety of reasons. First of all, the USPSA administers spots for students based roughly on each states electoral votes-thus delving out each state an approximately equal size of the pie based on population analysis. Your alternative would most certainly fail to do this. It would be prone to INCREDIBLE levels of politicization, as states vie for the funding and political favors are exchanged for differing funding levels. Remember that the states control their academic institutions, not the federal government. Another problem with this alternative is the fact that the funding would be spread much more thinly. Rather than 1300 students receiving a fully subsidizied tuition each year, 5000 students would receive one quarter of their tuition paid for each year due to political jockeying-this does little to alleviate the problem as the average graduate would still have $15,000 dollars in debt rather than $20,000 (Project on Student Debt, 2006).
Additionally "loan forgiveness" and "scholarships" have failed to work. Its empirically proven. See my analysis regarding Harvard's JD loan forgiveness program (by FAR the most generous in the entire country). If private institution loan forgiveness programs fail to incentivize public service, then a state kind of program most certainly would since funding is much more scarce.
Finally, your peace corps analogy is absolutely out of context. Volunteers in the Peace Corps only undergo their volunteer program between 6 months (PC Response)- 5 years (maximum allowed). Students graduating from the Academy will have a genuine interest in public service and have to serve at LEAST five years, but many will serve longers. The longevity of the program defeats your only example of a fallacy in the program.
Matt, the entire idea is not to set up a feeder school to get people into policy positions that are now dominated by graduates of elite universities. From Shawn's description, it's a means of staffing entry-level public-sector jobs like park rangers, teachers, and police officers. This is a job which is already handled quite admirably by public land-grant colleges.
If this is going to be an elite enterprise, make it an elite enterprise. If it's going to be a means of filling up entry-level public sector jobs, there are a lot of people in America who are facing a severe lack of opportunities in their lives and would be more than happy to be recruited into these entry-level public sector jobs if they were actively recruited. And I suspect that would be a lot cheaper and face a lot less political infighting than trying to set up a "service academy" to do it.
Thanks for the lively discussion regarding the U.S. Public Service Academy. I think the project proposal, which discusses possible curriculum and career services for future students, might clarify some questions that commenters have addressed here:
http://www.uspublicserviceacademy.org/USPSA_BlueprintDraft0507.pdf
"Maintaining a high-quality civil service is absolutely vital to our country's future, and this seems like one useful way to accomplish that. "
Bad idea, mostly for the risk of creating a US-version of the French ENA. Probably a parallel to the ROTC would be a better bet.
Sock Puppet-read the comments above. Your analysis is already discredited.
Kyle, keep in mind that for Harvard JDs, the economic opportunities available in the private sector are orders of magnitude greater than those available in public service. If the option is between becoming very wealthy vs. having loans forgiven in exchange for taking a mediocre-paying job, people are going to opt to become wealthy almost every time. However, if you give someone free tuition or loan forgiveness to be a teacher or police officer instead of an assistant sales associate, you might find a lot more takers.
I can conceptually understand why someone might propose an elite public service university to train the next generation of policymakers and federal administrators. I really don't see the reason such a thing would be necessary for training junior police officers and teachers, where there is already an extensive network of teachers' colleges and police academies all over the country to serve this purpose.
A simpler and more powerful solution to the declining quality of the federal workforce would be to re-institute the famous old "civil service exam," the highly effective PACE, which was thrown out in 1981 and has never come close to being fully replaced.
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2007/11/steve-sailers-test-case_4916.html
Creating a public service scholarship program akin to ROTC is a worthy, but limited, idea. It ignores the symbolic importance of creating an institution that can raise the visibility of public service and transform how young people across the country perceive, prepare for, and pursue public service. As a prestigious, national institution, a Public Service Academy will capture the imagination of a new generation of young people and channel their energy into public service. It will send a powerful message about the value we place on public service in this country – much the way that refusing to create a Public Service Academy (while offering FIVE military academies) sends the message to our young people that public service is somehow less important, less legitimate, or less patriotic than military service.
A scholarship program also would not be able to offer the intensive culture of service that a separate institution devoted to public service would instill in its students. Existing institutions have their own set of priorities and procedures; scholarship money would benefit individual students but would not necessarily alter the overarching mission of their institutions. Having a stand-alone campus is the only way to create a unique, unified campus culture that develops a strong esprit de corps around a public service mission. Like cadets at the military academies, Academy students would give up the traditional college life to focus on serving their nation. The result? Students gain a more intensive, more focused, more rewarding education, while the nation gains stronger, better-trained, more dedicated young leaders required to serve their country for five years.
"Public service" is bullshit. The last thing we need is more "public servants".
Try to produce people with some rationality and intelligence first, morons.
Then try cutting back on the number of fucked up "public servants" you already have who are fucking up the entire world.
And on what grounds do you base these unjustified attacks, Richard? Unfortunately, your experience, if that, does not represent the rest of society; just you.
Richard, you need to find a different forum. Everyone particpating in this one supports public servants; some of us disagree on the best way to encourage more of them. Furthermore, I personally don't know any elementary school teachers or park rangers who are "fucking up the entire world," as you so eloquently put it.
The strongest argument for a separate academy is that it places domestic civil service at a level of esteem akin to military service. It goes without saying the Academy would be an elite institution - I would have eagerly competed for such an opportunity when I was in high school.
Richard, you need to find a different forum. Everyone particpating in this one supports public servants; some of us disagree on the best way to encourage more of them. Furthermore, I personally don't know any elementary school teachers or park rangers who are "fucking up the entire world," as you so eloquently put it.
The strongest argument for a separate academy is that it places domestic civil service at a level of esteem akin to military service. It goes without saying the Academy would be an elite institution - I would have eagerly competed for such an opportunity when I was in high school.
As Shawn commented above, it's clear that the preponderance of these comments are responding to MY's single paragraph without reading what this "dumb idea" is actually about.
A few minutes on the Academy's website will dispel a lot of the judgments about bureaucracy writ large many of commenters are projecting onto the Academy.
Some of the tops:
1. With nearly 50% of the Federal workforce retiring over the next 10 years, people are going to be needed to fill those positions, and we're not necessarily talking the next Sec'y of the Interior (although over the course of the years, that may well be the case). We're looking at people who want to teach, clean up after natural disasters, work as peacekeepers and patrol our borders, and the like. It seems that those who have commented here positively have been involved in some sort of service and are likely Gen X and younger: these folks were brought up with the ethic of giving back and want to continue to do so. Not everyone who wants to serve wants to do policy work; it's important to bear that in mind.
2. Graduate programs, particularly the MPPs that feed the top echelons of government agencies &c. tend to come from a few elite schools currently: not reflecting what government employment should look like. It SHOULD look like America, frankly, and it looks like the most expensive schools around per any ratings guide. It's the male, pale, Yale syndrome. There are certainly exceptions (Clinton School of Public Service at the U. of AR for one), but the private programs at the expensive universities are the REAL ENAs of this country, and not by any means would the Academy be. It's the similarity of thinking at the elite schools across the US who are feeding the top echelons of everything that we need to be wary of, not an undergraduate institution that would provide an intensive education in leadership, service, and management to those who really want to serve.
3. Further, considering the number of young women who want to serve but are wary of the military academy culture - - which is improving but remains by and large male-centric - - there has to be an option for those who are serious about their dedication, don't necessarily come from the most privileged backgrounds, and don't want to pursue the military route. And maybe they're young women, all the better!
4. The uniform WILL be cool.
5. Gen X and Gen Y are a lot different; it's time we listen to what they have to say about their desire to serve, and it's a strong one. It's why thousands of young people have signed on to support the movement to create the Academy by giving their time, energy, and ideas. These are young people of great achievement who recognize the importance and power of service.
I'm thankful for them this Independence Day.
catowner,
that was a beautiful post. And agreed: I like reading Ygesias' blog and respect him in my way but it takes a certain marvellously ignorant sort not necessarily to think this is a super idea, but to think it's such an obviously super idea as to be self-evidently so -- and that's our Matt. And in a way it's the problem with the proposed university -- it will generate this thinking on a massive scale.
Can we stop the double posting? The Atlantic needs to spend more than a few bucks for hamster feed and fix their website?
Can we stop the double posting? The Atlantic needs to spend more than a few bucks for hamster feed and fix their website?
(posted twice for comedic effect)
Chelsea St. Onge-May: "Richard, you need to find a different forum."
Where there are fewer morons? Hard to do. Most of the blogs have a lot of morons.
"Everyone particpating in this one supports public servants;"
Which is one small reason why you're morons.
"Furthermore, I personally don't know any elementary school teachers or park rangers who are "fucking up the entire world," as you so eloquently put it."
And your ignorance is another reason why you're a moron.
"The strongest argument for a separate academy is that it places domestic civil service at a level of esteem akin to military service. It goes without saying the Academy would be an elite institution - I would have eagerly competed for such an opportunity when I was in high school."
Yet another reason. Not to mention that this is why "elementary school teachers" are "fucking up the entire world" - because they're not educating you in anything remotely resembling the real world.
And park rangers are cops, and by most accounts I've heard about them, are just as big assholes as most cops who get to put on a uniform, wear a gun and harass people for bullshit legal reasons.
Tomorrow morning I will walk into a court room, probably with my head down and cheeks flushed, to be reprimanded for a speeding ticket. I could whine, complain, and say I was harassed for bullshit legal reasons; however, I have enough gumption to admit that I was breaking the law and now I have a price to pay. You, Mr. Hack, should have enough gumption to admit that the Public Service Academy is an idea worthy of consideration, and one that could at least be respected. It's time to realize that your narrow-minded outlook on the current world won't hold a candle to progressive ideas such as that of the Academy. :)
Tomorrow morning I will walk into a court room, probably with my head down and cheeks flushed, to be reprimanded for a speeding ticket. I could whine, complain, and say I was harassed for bullshit legal reasons; however, I have enough gumption to admit that I was breaking the law and now I have a price to pay. You, Mr. Hack, should have enough gumption to admit that the Public Service Academy is an idea worthy of consideration, and one that could at least be respected. It's time to realize that your narrow-minded outlook on the current world won't hold a candle to progressive ideas such as that of the Academy. :)
Comments closed July 17, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
As I see it, the main advantage of a civil-service career right now is its extreme job security; the main disadvantage is the ossified work environment. With that in mind, I will venture that offering a free college education will only serve to attract more of the risk-averse-bureaucrat types currently comprising the civil-service workforce.
Posted by James Gary | July 3, 2008 11:30 AM