TOPICS
TOPICS
Lawmakers unveil bill to establish public service academy
Several House and Senate lawmakers came together Thursday to introduce companion bills aimed at drawing young people into government through the creation of a public service academy.
Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Reps. Jim Moran, D-Va., and Chris Shays, R-Conn., are sponsoring the measures. They said the bills will help the nation combat potential acts of terrorism and natural disasters as well as a wave of retirements slated to hit the government over the next decade.
The academy "is the most meaningful way we can educate people to be leaders tomorrow," Moran said. "What you're seeing is the beginning of something that matters."
The measures would establish a 5,000-person undergraduate academy, on par with the nation's military academies, to inject prestige back into public institutions and highlight the importance of public service.
The academy would be free to students, at a cost of $205 million a year to taxpayers. Students would be nominated by members of Congress in a process much like that at the military service academies, and would be required to study abroad and to complete internships with nonprofit and military organizations. They also would undergo a summer of emergency response training.
After graduation, students would repay the country for their free education by spending at least five years working for the government, at the local, state or federal level. In a departure from a version of the measure introduced last year, they could not fulfill this requirement by working at nonprofit charitable organizations.
Lawmakers are hopeful that the reputation of the military academies will shed light on the public service academy's potential for success. "Just think of the military without the academies," Shays said, "and just think about what public service could be like with an academy."
The original bill was filed late last congressional session but did not make it out of committee. The lawmakers pledged to make the measure a major priority this year, adding that 28 co-sponsors have signed on.
Chris Myers Asch, who came to Washington to lobby for the academy after founding a nonprofit to encourage college attendance in the poverty-stricken Mississippi Delta, said the bill also has gained strong support from young people across the nation. Thus far, more than 1,000 have signed a letter to convince lawmakers of grassroots support for the academy, he said.
And the bill may gain even stronger support as the nation becomes more informed of the threat of a pending retirement wave, with two-thirds of the federal workforce eligible to retire over the next decade, the lawmakers noted.
"We are facing ... the impending retirement of so many of the senior ranks of our government," Clinton said. "The people who do everything from help predict the weather, to run our nuclear power plants, to figure out how the Social Security system will keep functioning ... we're concerned that we're not going to have the workforce that we need in the next 10 years to keep this complicated government functioning."
The lawmakers attributed much of the problem in recruiting young people into public service to the fact that college graduates often come into the workforce with massive amounts of college debt. Irasema Salcido, founder of the Cesar Chavez Public Charter High School in Washington, D.C., said many of the school's graduates would like to go into public service but cannot afford it. "The Public Service Academy would allow them to continue in public service," she said.
COMMENTS
- To the analyst at the SSA in Baltimore: Your son's service as a Peace Corps member provides him with non-competitive eligibility for a federal GS position (in his field). He can market himself to federal agencies independently, either via personal contacts or perhaps at a federal job fair. He can be hired almost on-the-spot without applying for a position. I believe that this rare eligibility, which is very rare (and well earned) in federal hiring, lasts for two years after leaving the Peace Corps. When I was with the IRS in Washington, D.C., we hired several prior Peace Corps personnel, all of who proved themselves as very productive and valued members of our office. Many federal hiring managers like to hire Peace Corps personnel, both because of the relative ease in doing so as well as the high caliber of personnel who come from the Peace Corps ranks. Good luck! Michael Smith Posted March 26, 2007 12:21 PM
- I believe the public service academy is a good start. My son has a degree in sociology with a certificate in African American history. He volunteered and served three years in the Peace Corps (Senegal, West Africa) as a volunteer and then as a PC regional PCV. When he returned from the PC he attended the School for International (SIT) Training with a degree in Management/Sustainable development. He interned in Salt Lake City, Utah at Vista-Americorps. He met his wife at SIT. He wife is from Vladivostok. He taught English at the BCM Language Center in Seongnam, Korea. He and his wife returned to Vladivostok for the birth of their daughter. He taught English in the University and at the Technical University in Vladivostok. He recently returned to the US and has been unable to find employment either with the Federal Government or Private Industry. He is currently working part-time and is thinking about teaching. I guess the expectation is if you are recommended by Congress and attend this academy then you are the cream of the crop. GovExec.com reader Posted March 26, 2007 11:01 AM
- The comments from the USAF engineer are in full comport with my initial contention that the DoD is permeated with an insular mindset and sense of entitlement. Excellence is not only gained or present or demonstrated in only DoD organizations. Skill sets are portable and translatable. Further, those truly among the "best and the brightest" do not need to have de facto non-competitive or biased career pathways open for them, career 'pathways' including DLAMP that are created/cobbled together by one agency careerist DoD staffers for one agency careerist current or prior DoD staffers (GS, military or contractor) throughout their careers. In fact, when the search for excellence is genuine and the competition is truly fair and open for all that apply (and are not skewed merely for current or prior DoD staffers), hiring outcomes are almost always highly diverse. Successful first order applicants and competitors can and do come from outside merely DoD. And yes, they can and even do come from outside the public sector. The mere notion of any organization, including DoD, maintaining near 100% levels of inbreeding -- even when purportedly recruiting from outside of DoD -- such outcomes speak for themselves and provide more than ample evidence of the underlying wrongheaded insular entitlement-based culture that is unfortunately present and thriving within the largest of all federal agencies. Michael Smith Posted March 23, 2007 5:32 PM
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