Sen. Clinton's worst idea yet

If she really wants to promote government service, a much better proposal (equally unnecessary, in my view, but better than this) would be a scholarship or student-loan-forgiveness program aimed at encouraging more public-sector employees to obtain Masters of Public Administration degrees.

Now THAT suggestion I heartily approve of. Of course I would, as that's exactly what we do locally--but then we have more than one good MPA program locally. Our current structures reward time-in-service with heirarchic advancement. As bureaucrats rise through the ranks they often have extensive experience of the functioning of their own narrow areas, but little in the way of applied management skills (either organizational or people) and extremely limited knowledge of other areas. Any move out of their own area of experience, and they're starting raw again because they simply don't have those skillsets other than through osmosis.

The specific primary objection I have to a "national academy" proposal is that of the creation of a technocratic elite as the basis for governmental bureaucracy, one with a rigid ideological POV. Though I can see how it would appeal to Ivy League alumni--in many areas, it already exists in a looser fashion in some strata of government.

The idea that one could have a single "public service academy" that was NOT rigidly ideological is laughable. The military academies are explicitly so, and for good reason. Who would get to set the traditions and principles of such a public service academy? Uh huh.

Hey, here's a radical idea. Why don't we beef up the teaching of history, civics, and responsible citizenship in regular schools? For everyone?

but I think this might be floated to off-set Dodd's brilliant idea of a draft to supply Americorp more peace soldiers. Government could simply provide incentives for people wishing to go into existing programs, as you stated. Remember, Edwards wants to take 10,000 American professionals and send them abroad to fix infrastructure, poverty and insitutions. This seems to contradict his rant about Katrina lag time in help or bettering those questionable levees. I would argue much of this is Hillary's triangulation designed to blunt the coming increased attacks on her Bush/Cheney light status. Next, she might propose new government-run medical/nursing schools to supply more doctors and nurses. Supply is a problem, but there are ways to beef up the private sector. I am more interested in the details of her healthcare plan and what exactly she proposes to do in Iraq and Pakistan. I find it odd that Putin is steering away from Reid on Hamas. Wasn't it Putin who first invited Hamas to Moscow right after the "election" with ReidCo defending Hamas as the rightfully elected government of Palestinians? At some point Hillary will have to focus on pressing problems rather than re-design public service programs. At least this babble diverts attention from Gonzales and Iraq. She's trying to spin something that sounds positive and "progressive". LOL

And I disagree that this is her worst idea yet. There have been others......

What Tully said.

Thanks for coming by, Chris, and we'll certainly check it out! I may well still have the same take after my own read, but I'd rather have the info up front for all than shuffled away. It deserves consideration on the actual plans, and not just on our generalized guesses.

I'm embedding your link here for easy one-click access.

Would you be willing to answer questions in the future, after we've had a chance to review?

Thank you for stopping by, but I still think this idea is extraordinarily bad.

From your FAQ:

What kinds of jobs would Academy graduates do during their five-year service requirement?
Academy graduates will spend five years serving their nation by working as teachers, park rangers, police officers, border agents, and other critical public service jobs at the local, state, national and even international levels.

With a total student population of about 5,100, the Academy will offer degrees in education, criminal justice, the humanities in general, and what else? My state university offers programs that prepare its students for all of those jobs and more, but we have over 30,000 students. The skills needed to be a teacher are very different from the skills needed to be a police officer.

Moreover, you have no clear sense of purpose at this point. Below is your list of reasons for creating this Academy, followed by some pretty basic responses:

Why do we need to do this now?
We need to build a Public Service Academy for several reasons:
1) First, recent events have inspired a younger generation and imbued many young people with a sense of civic engagement not seen in decades. Unfortunately, many of these students are priced out of public service careers because they rack up so much debt while in school.

Both the federal government and many states provide for loan forgiveness or repayment for graduates who perform public service, either by teaching in poor areas or through other avenues. The House just passed a provision expanding such loan forgiveness.

Your figures said that this Academy will cost just $0.70 per American. Assuming this was based on about 300 million Americans, that means you anticipate a budget of $210 million. For that amount, you could provide $10,000 of student debt relief to 21,000 students across the country, 20 times more than are expected to graduate each year from the Academy. As the average student loan debt in 2000 was $16,000 [pdf] or so, this is a significant amount of money.

2) Second, we face a critical and growing shortage of public servants ? as baby boomers retire, we will need more teachers, more cops, more air traffic controllers, more everything.

There are 6.1 million teachers in the United States. There are over 675,000 sworn law enforcement officers (non-federal) in this country, with almost another 300,000 civilian employees of law enforcement agencies. There are over 12,000 special agents of the FBI, an agency with over 28,000 employees. I could go on, but you get my point.

Even if devoted SOLELY to producing teachers, your Academy would take 12 years to produce just 1% of the current number of teachers. At 5,100 students, the Academy would not amount to a drop in the bucket of any future needs. Your Academy is clearly aimed at producing managers not beat cops and teachers.

3) Finally, we currently have no national undergraduate institution dedicated to developing civilian leaders and meeting our nation?s critical needs. We offer our young people outstanding, federally-funded opportunities to go to college and serve their country in the military, but none to serve as a civilian.

What evidence is there that this lack has actually harmed our bureaucracies, at either the state or federal level? Civil Service jobs seem to have no trouble recruiting qualified candidates, despite often byzantine hiring regulations and qualifications. Moreover, there are a number of internship programs available at the federal level to offer young college graduates immediate experience across a wide spectrum of federal agencies. In high profile offices which are likely to provide a stepping-stone to remunerative private-sector employment, we seem quite capable of attracting, at the federal level, plenty of graduates from Ivy League and other elite universities. Indeed, a good friend of mine recently dropped out of a very prestigious law school to run the Teach for America office in a major city.

As noted above, if paying for college is what this is all about, that can be more easily (and far more cheaply) accomplished by scholarship programs across the country.

As I said in my post, public service is indeed a noble calling. But it's not the military. Except for police officers, we don't expect to be shot at on a regular basis. We mostly get to work in air conditioning. As a whole, we have mediocre pay, but strong health insurance and excellent retirement plans. We have to put up with a lot of crap, from the bad employees it's too difficult to fire to the crazy employees who see evil motives in every deviation from "the book" to elected officials who want to blame us for all the ills of government. But none of those problems are going to be solved by some National Academy of Public Service.

The inevitable result of your well-intentioned idea is to create an elite hierarchy of specially-trained people who will not do the grunt work of public service but who will step into the highest levels of government as "enlightened" leaders. The government bureaucracy is insulated enough from the population already. At least by going to a normal university and pursuing a normal degree, future bureaucrats must mix with the hoi polloi of the general population, people whose future lies more likely in the private sector rather than the public. Your Academy would remove even that mixing, increasing the divide the public and its servants, and do a profound disservice to us all.