WWS adds scholars to initiative

The Wilson School announced last week that it will expand its Scholars in the Nation's Service Initiative (SINSI) next year in a bid to attract more students to careers in government service.

The program will offer 10 scholarships instead of the original five announced last year. Five will be awarded to Princeton juniors, while the remaining spaces will be available to all U.S. citizens who have already received an undergraduate degree.

Wilson School administrators see SINSI's inclusion of graduate students as vital to its success. "All along there was a plan and [we hoped] that we would be able to have this second component [of the program]," Wilson School Associate Dean Nolan McCarty said.

But the motives of the program have been questioned since its creation last spring.

The Wilson School has been embroiled in controversy since July 2002, when the Robertson family sued the University, President Tilghman and three of the trustees responsible for oversight of the $650 million Robertson Foundation endowment.

"I'm quite suspicious of anything Princeton does because pretty much everything that they have done in this matter [has been done] to improve their litigation position," Bill Robertson '72 said of the program last February.

Dean of the Wilson School Anne-Marie Slaughter '80 has denied that the program was created as a legal tactic, saying that the school would have gone ahead with the program "[even] if the lawsuit were dropped tomorrow."

The Robertsons allege that the University has misused the foundation's funds, which they say are intended to support the Wilson School's graduate program and to place its graduates in federal government jobs, especially in foreign policy. The University denies any misuse and says it does a good job of placing graduates in the public sector.

Though Robertson conceded that the program does address issues at the core of the Robertson Foundation's mission, he said that "the problem is it's just miniscule."

"I have to say that if they had done a couple of these kinds of things 45 years ago, it might have been encouraging, but I'm afraid that we just think that there's no chance that Princeton can change its stripes," Robertson added.

This year's scholars

Though only a handful of people showed up at Dodds Auditorium for SINSI's well-publicized information session in October, the selection committee said it was satisfied with the size of the applicant pool.

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"The student response was very strong, particularly given the high bar we set for applications," Slaughter said in an e-mail. "[Based on the quality of applicants] we could easily have given 10 scholarships rather than five."

Interviews of the 10 finalists for the five scholarship spots took place on Monday, but the total number of applications SINSI received has not been released.

"I applied for the program because it was a perfect fit," said Kim Bonner '08, who was interviewed this week. "It would pay me to do what I already want to do." Bonner is also a staff photographer for The Daily Princetonian.

Many students who were interested in federal government employment said that they chose not to apply because scholarship recipients must make a four-year postgraduate commitment in their junior year.

"[SINSI] looks like a great program," Wilson School major Hilary Billings '08 said in an e-mail. She considered applying but didn't because "it was just too daunting to commit the next five years of my life."

The five chosen scholars will spend this summer in a federal government internship and be employed with the federal government for two years after graduation. They will then return to the Wilson School to complete its two-year masters in public affairs (MPA) degree program.

Members of the selection committee said they were very pleased with the finalists' interviews, which included questions about policy issues such as global warming and the rise of China.

"As we had hoped, lots of very serious young foreign policy experts, and lots of very serious scientists and engineers [applied to the program]," Wilson School professor Gary Bass said in an e-mail.

The program's creators have said that its purpose is to help remedy a predicted shortage of federal government employees in coming years. There is a concern that college graduates interested in public service have increasingly entered the nonprofit sector or other nongovernmental fields.

Slaughter has expressed the hope that "other schools of public and international affairs will follow [the Wilson School's] lead, to increase the prestige and attraction of government service nationwide."