Alumni outline barriers to service

Sen. Paul Sarbanes '54 (D-Md.) and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker '49 discussed problems the government faces in recruiting students to public service as part of a four-member panel Friday in McCosh 50.

The event, part of the Wilson School's 75th anniversary conference on government service, also included Indiana Governor Mitchell Daniels '71 and Joseph Nye '58, former dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

Nye said that money was not a consideration for most people when considering government service. The main factor, he said, was the impact of the work.

"A lot of people will enter into public service despite the low pay," Nye said. "They don't say 'show me the money,' but instead 'show me the work.'"

Despite growing interest, Nye said the government has a hard time recruiting new talent because many people delay their entry into service, and later financial responsibilities keep them away.

"The government really needs to focus on recruiting people for their first job and first opportunity," Nye said. "Often, most people simply price themselves out of the market."

The main challenge facing the government in recruiting students is the conception that the government is inefficient, Volcker said.

"We have this clear evidence that this government is not operating efficiently," he said. "We can't look at the Department of Homeland Security for efficiency nor the intelligence services for expertise."

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Volcker said that the government should look to the military and the U.S. Postal Service — which have been faced with a competitive marketplace — as examples of efficiency in government.

"The postal service and military, although the most bureaucratic of institutions, are also the most trusted," he said. "Clearly, there are problems that could be more effectively solved with competition."

Daniels said that a performance-based system in government would be the best way to make government service more attractive to college graduates.

"Our federal government remains a monopoly: it tends to overcharge and underservice its customers," he said. "New leaders in government will have to be drivers of real, measurable, quantifiable performance."

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Sarbanes agreed that the public conception of the government as inefficient deters students from public service.

"The challenge in the greater sense is the denigration of government," Sarbanes said, "The question of the validity of government has cast a cloud on the idea of national service."

"A small truth that government can't do everything has transformed into a big falsehood that government can't do anything," he added.

Recent ethical violations in government have also contributed to this widespread belief, Sarbanes said.

"Ethics should be a component of every issue because we keep slipping down a slippery slope," he said. "People feel the need to compromise in order to keep up with the competition, but we all now need to get back."

Sarbanes said he supports the new Scholars in the Nation's Service fellowship program, announced during the conference which will fund students' undergraduate and graduate studies in public affairs. He said it was a step in the right direction to address these concerns.

"We need to think about how we can restore the rationale to our government," Sarbanes said, "because if we lose it, we really have undermined our democracy, and that is not just an issue for the policy schools but for all of us."