`Best and Brightest' Have Dim View of Public Sector

Insight on the News, August 27, 2001 by Sean Paige

First the bad news: A recent survey of students at one university found that only 34 percent of graduates with public-policy degrees actually took jobs in the public sector last year. But here's the good news: That university was Harvard, and more specifically, its vaunted John F. Kennedy School of Government, which serves as an incubator for "best-and-brightest" types whose pursuit of some Platonic bureaucratic ideal has gotten us into this mess in the first place.

The report, conducted by an assistant professor at the school, Carol Chetkovich, for PricewaterhouseCoopers Endowment for the Business of Government, suggests more needs to be done to polish government's tarnished image and combat the malicious stereotypes of mismanagement, inefficiency and incompetence spread by people like, well, us. That recommendation probably nixes any chance that waste & abuse ever will be required reading on the Kennedy School syllabus.

"For so many [Kennedy School grads] to shun government employment -- at a time when the public-sector talent pool, particularly at the federal level, is diminishing -- raises concerns about the future of government and questions about the role of institutions designed to train public leaders" said Chetkovich. Isn't it just like Harvard to conclude the "future of government" itself hinges on its graduates, as if alumni of some third-rate community college wouldn't have credentials enough to handle the job of running the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The study reportedly found that most students who initially were enthused about public-sector careers quickly soured on them when exposed to the reality of it all. In fact, one peek into the belly of the bureaucratic beast apparently was enough to make most students long for the ruthless dog-eat-dog Darwinism of profiteering pirates in the private sector. Comments revealed a particularly strong curiosity about and admiration for the private sector that was at times coupled with a troubling disdain for government, according to the report.

So the Kennedy School's 34 percent placement rate actually may be ideal. It provides just enough competent, predisillusioned people to keep the whole house of cards from imploding and leaving seniors without Social Security and Medicare, but not enough to turn it into an unstoppable juggernaut. In this regard, it's probably worth recalling something Harry Truman once said: "Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship"

Student-loan debts also made lower-paying public-sector jobs less enticing to Kennedy School alums, according to the report. It proposes that government offer to repay those loans as an inducement to graduates. Perhaps the school should be thinking about a cut in tuition instead?

No word in the report on where the other 66 percent of Kennedy School grads are. But they're out there somewhere, probably poised to join the plague of planners that dream of taming your community into the practically perfect place -- and then have you pay for it.