Kennedy School grads pick government over private sector

Public policy graduates from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government are getting government jobs in record numbers, school officials announced Friday.

Sixty-three percent of the 76 graduates of the school's prestigious Master in Public Policy program took government jobs this year, compared with 40 percent in 2001 and 34 percent in 2000. Until this year, and over the last two decades, the program's graduates had increasingly been turning to private sector jobs, a fact cited by many public administration observers to illustrate the government's recruiting problems.

The turnaround is a sign that young people are being drawn again to government jobs as a way to make a difference after Sept. 11, said John Noble, director of career services at the school.

"We had three graduates go to the CIA, three to the FBI and 10 to 12 go to the State Department," Noble said. "That shows they are pretty concerned about security and national defense."

Noble also cited the weak economy and the "Enron effect"-a decline in trust of private corporations-as reasons for the shift toward government service. In past years, as many as 30 percent of graduates have gone to consulting firms. This year, only 7 percent went to consulting firms.

The Kennedy School also provides loan forgiveness and scholarships to students who agree to serve in government.

The school reported higher numbers of graduates from all of its programs going into government. Fifty-nine percent of the class of 2002 took government jobs, up from 48 percent last year.

Christine Riehl, a mid-career Master of Public Administration graduate, decided to switch from the nonprofit world, where she helped found an organization that helped teenage girls, to the State Department, where she will serve in the public diplomacy field.

"I feel that we should all be giving back for what we have," Riehl said. "And I'm very interested in international affairs."

While the number of public policy graduates entering government service is the highest in 20 years, some surveys and reports are finding continuing challenges to the government's effort to attract people to federal jobs.

A Partnership for Public Service poll issued this week found that 80 percent of Americans had not developed a greater interest in working for the federal government since Sept. 11, 2001.

Another recent survey, conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, a Washington-based polling firm, found that 75 percent of college students had a somewhat, or very, favorable opinion of the federal government as an employer. Still, most college students said that private sector employers care more about their employees, provide greater advancement opportunities, have more challenging work and have more respectable co-workers than the federal government does.

The government also has to work at keeping young people once they take federal jobs. Amit Bordia and Tony Cheesebrough, two of this year's Kennedy graduates, recently asked 25 Harvard University grads-turned-federal-employees whether the agencies they worked for had good and capable managers. All 25 said no. The Harvard alums say they often feel like their work doesn't matter and that they're not making a difference.

But some observers point out that many jobs in the private sector, including those at consulting firms that advise government agencies, have a direct impact on public policy.

"It's worthwhile for everybody to spend time in government, especially people who are public policy-oriented," said Mark Abramson, executive director for the Arlington, Va.-based PwC Endowment for the Business of Government. "It's also important to realize people can work on public policy issues in different places. In the consulting industry, for one, people are working on public problems. Especially with career patterns now, people have a lot more mobility [to move among sectors]. That is a positive trend."