Setting the facts straight

The author, David Smart, of the May 9 column, "Not nearly enough," in The Daily Princetonian has his facts quite wrong.

For example, in raising questions about the Wilson School's commitment to encouraging government service among its students, particularly undergraduates, Smart inaccurately states that the Robertson Foundation "funds much of the Wilson School's budget." The Foundation only supports the Wilson School's graduate program — no Robertson Foundation funds are used to support the undergraduate program's operating budget or career services functions.

This is an important distinction. The Wilson School provides all sorts of opportunities for our graduate students — from real-world experience offered by graduate policy workshops, to helping with placements in summer internships and permanent jobs in the government or nonprofit sectors; from career counseling, to mock job interviews, to coaching for the Presidential Management Fellows program and State Department foreign service exams. These are all funded through the Robertson Foundation.

Robertson funds, however, may not be expended on similar undergraduate career services. This, in part, is why the Scholars in the Nation's Service Initiative was created last year, and why we are now expanding the program to not only encourage more Princeton undergraduates to pursue careers in government, but to create tangible opportunities to do so. Indeed, significant University fundraising efforts have been required to pay for the undergraduate portions of each Scholar's studies and the required government internships.

While the School's undergraduate career services office does not have the resources available to our graduate office, it attempts to encourage undergrads to pursue public service employment through panels and information sessions on careers and internships in government and the nonprofit sectors, and by forwarding weekly email memos to students describing job and internship opportunities in the public sector. Indeed, the undergraduate office only supports searches for jobs in the public or nonprofit sectors; and Program Manager Monica Ruscil has developed considerable expertise in advising students concerning possible public service internships and jobs.

In referring to the ongoing litigation between some members of the Robertson family and the University, Smart claimed University officials were "imprecise" in their reporting of how many Wilson School graduate students enter government service, vague in how they define "public" service and unclear about what it means for someone to have "pursued" government service. But this is completely incorrect.

The University has reported data on first jobs taken by all of our graduate students upon graduation. The Office of Graduate Career Services publicly lists the first jobs of graduates for every year since 1996 — categorized by public sector, as well as nonprofit or private sector jobs.

Our historical track record is clear and strong: between 1973 and 2006, 72.5 percent of Master's in Public Affairs graduates who took jobs chose employment in the public and nonprofit sectors upon graduation, including 41.4 percent who went to work in government service (federal, state, local or with foreign governments) and 27.3 percent who went to work for nonprofit and international organizations (like the United Nations). In 2006, of those students who took jobs, 84.1 percent chose employment in the public and nonprofit sectors, including 50.7 percent in government service and 33.3 percent in nonprofit and international organizations.

Of course, the Wilson School welcomes the opportunity to exchange ideas about how we may further encourage our undergraduates to pursue careers in government, as so many of our alumni do today. But it's important to have the facts straight. Stanley N. Katz is Faculty Chair of the Undergraduate Program in the Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He may be reached at snkatz@princeton.edu.