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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."

COMMENTS

• As a class of 2002 graduate of the Kennedy School who is currently working in the government, I wanted to comment on your article. First, there are a couple of inaccuracies that need to be corrected. There were 150-plus graduates of this year's MPP class. I don't know where you got your number of graduates, but it is wrong. One possibility is that 76 is the number that you received from the career services office, because that is the number of people who they can account for. Given that inaccuracy, fewer then 63 percent of K-School MPP graduates went into government and all that number tells you is that 63 percent of the class, who have jobs, went into government. That suggests that the absolute number of graduates working in government has not actually changed from years past in any significant manner. Rather, it says, the government is the only one who is hiring. The number of "scholarships" the Kennedy School provides to people going into government is sufficiently small as to be deemed almost nonexistent. In fact, the only real inducement that the Kennedy School offers to go into government is loan forgiveness and that is tied to salary rather than where you go work. As such, there is just as much inducement to go into low-paying non-profits as government. In general, although your story touched on most of the components of KSG graduate's decision-making process, I think your emphasis was misplaced. After going through the recruiting process, it is fair to say that the private-sector interest in recruiting at the Kennedy School this year was almost nil, which was a big change from years past. As such, it was quite difficult for students to get any jobs outside of the government through recruiting. The statement you attribute to John Noble is, in my opinion, misguided: "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." I believe my classmates and I went to the Kennedy School in the first place because we wanted to make a difference, and most of us who were looking for jobs after graduation still share that desire. In talking to my classmates, I don't believe that there was any significant change in opinion about government work, but simply a change of opinion on where we could get jobs. Bob Kolasky Posted February 24, 2003 4:27 PM