Big shifts in our system— from Pearl Harbor to 9/11 — have historically awakened a sense of national purpose, demand for government action, and respect for public service in a citizenry accustomed to seeing government as the source of troubles—not their remedy. The pandemic has now placed the country in the middle of another massive disruption. Capitol Riots. Anti-Asian racism. Joe Biden. However, this crisis has also highlighted the dedication and expertise of public servants on the front lines of the pandemic.
However—in today’s agethere are currently six paths for achievement-minded college grads: finance, management consulting, law school, medical school, and grad school/academia. The sixth is Teach for America, which continues to draw approximately 5,000 graduates a year.
Here are the stats from national universities:
If you add up the numbers, you’ll see that these six paths account for between 50–70% of top university graduates in the US. Relatedly, the top destinations for graduates from these schools are New York City, San Francisco, D.C., Boston, Chicago and L.A., all of which are hubs for professional services.
Why is our talent so concentrated? Former Yale professor Bill Deresiewicz recently published a book, Excellent Sheep, which argues that elite college students are being trained to advance and compete with little regard for what is beyond themselves. In my mind, it’s in large part a question of access and resources. The banks and consulting firms have massive recruitment budgets and spend millions a year seeding and building talent pipelines (as does Teach for America). Law school, medical school, and graduate school are very easy and obvious to access and apply to. How much would the brand “Harvard Medical School” be worth if it belonged a private company?
Another byproduct of the six paths is that we have less diversity of thought. Academics kind of think a certain way. So do lawyers. So do software engineers. And consultants. And doctors. Having most of our top students being trained in the same handful of ways might be good in some ways — we might break fewer things. But it might make it less likely that we do adequate changes to our system.
It’s time we create a new path for young people if we want to save this country. If America has any chance to recover, let alone rescue a semblance of unity from the rubble of our polarized politics, we have to heed the admirable examples of these workers and seize this moment to end the war on government, revive our institutions, and shape a new era of public service.
I didn’t get into the arena of politics until I was 15. Having my first experience as an intern in a County office, I realized the impact that I could make as a single person in politics, being able to shape the rule of law for millions of Americans amazed me. The grandson of a former military officer, I grew up in the world of the military: By the time I was 15, we had moved at least five times. I learned more about my city. I came to know my country well, with a feel for its physical expanse and beauty, as well as its diversity and bustling possibility. I grew up with not only an abiding respect for the American military, but a newfound enduring admiration for public service.
If terrible challenges can expose our weaknesses and self-inflicted wounds, they can also clarify the path before us. With historic levels of unemployment, nearly every sector of our economy under water, our health-care system strained to its limits, and our national interests at risk, we need every ounce of talent and energy that Americans have to offer to not only rebuild but reinvent our society. If ever there were a moment to call Americans to serve, it’s now. To help ensure that they answer that call, that a life in public service is appealing, three ingredients are necessary.
First, it is long past time to end the war on government. That is an argument not for uncritical reverence for public service, but rather for restoring respect for its crucial role in our democracy.
Bashing government and public servants is a remarkably durable American political pastime. Otto Passman, a crotchety representative from Louisiana, captured the mood in an exchange with a forlorn State Department official half a century ago. “Son,” he said. “I don’t smoke and I don’t drink. My only pleasure in life is kicking the shit out of the foreign-aid programs of the United States of America” — a sentiment that he and many of his colleagues applied with Catholic abandon to government service in general, and that Trump has taken to a whole new level.
If our political leaders continue to belittle public service, hollow out government institutions, and put patriotic Americans in the crosshairs of our culture wars, bureaucratic drift and dysfunction will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the gap between citizens and the state will only grow.
Second, our leaders need to speed up our institutions’ reform. We can’t simply dismiss political attacks as the work of the ignorant and mean-spirited. While many of those critiques may be unfair and ill-informed, they’re not without foundation. The hiring practices of the federal civilian service are badly outdated. The workforce is top-heavy generationally: More than one-third of federal employees are eligible for retirement in the next five years, and only 6 percent are under 30. The rules and processes of personnel systems are creaky and cumbersome. Recruitment and retention — especially in high-priority skills such as science and technology — are growing problems, and too many agencies drown themselves in red tape. That’s hardly an effective advertisement for public service.
Finally, this is a moment to think big about public service, to help repair the disconnect between citizen interests and the wider national interest. Without stepping into the constitutional and budgetary minefield of mandatory national service, the commission suggests creative ways in which a “culture of service” could be elevated in the United States. That starts with a revival of serious civic education in our schools — not an insignificant priority for a society in which one out of five adults can’t identify any of the three branches of government. The report also calls for exponential growth in existing service and volunteer programs, including public enterprises such as AmeriCorps and private organizations such as Teach for America. The pandemic experience ought to lead to new national service programs, a public-health reserve corps, for example, and a similar disaster-relief initiative to cope with the harsh realities of a changing climate.
A new administration could also increase incentives for public service, both as a career and in shorter periods of engagement. Those could include an array of educational and economic benefits: greater loan repayment or tuition assistance; GI bill–like programs, based on the length of committed public service; and ROTC or JROTC-like programs to promote interest in civilian service.
Imagining the rebirth of public service is easier than realizing it. Inertia is a stubborn antagonist. Resource constraints will be even more severe after the pandemic, and the bandwidth of a new White House even more constricted. But it is also difficult — during this once-in-a-generation public-health, economic, and political calamity — to recall another moment when the call to serve was more important.
