In a nutshell, what is the U.S. Public Service Academy?
The U.S. Public Service Academy will be an undergraduate institution devoted to developing civilian leaders. Modeled on the military academies, the Academy will offer four years of tuition-free education in exchange for five years of civilian service following graduation.

How many students will it serve?
The Academy will serve roughly 5,100 high-achieving students from across the United States and the world.

How will students be admitted?
Spots for nearly 1,300 incoming freshmen will be allocated by state, following a congressional nomination process similar to that used for admission to the military academies. Nominees would compete against other nominees from their state, thus ensuring that each state will be proportionally represented in the student body.

What kind of curriculum will Academy students follow?
The Academy will offer a unique curriculum that combines a broad-based liberal arts education with an emphasis on leadership development and public service. The combination of rigorous academic work with hands-on learning experiences will give our students the analytical skills, academic background, and practical experience they need to think critically and flexibly about the challenges of the twenty-first century.

What kinds of jobs would Academy graduates do during their five-year service requirement?
Academy graduates will spend five years serving our nation by working in education, health care, law enforcement, emergency management, and other critical public sector fields at the local, state, and national levels. They will be placed in strategically important positions and geographic areas where they are needed most.

What if an Academy graduate wants to pursue graduate education?
The Academy will follow the lead of the military academies and subsidize students’ graduate education in return for an extended service commitment. For every year of subsidized graduate education, students must add an additional two years to their service commitment. Thus, an Academy graduate who pursues a four-year medical degree will be responsible for serving the nation for a total of thirteen years following their graduation from medical school — the required five years, plus eight additional years.

Where will the Academy be located?
That decision ultimately will be up to Congress, but we feel that one site that makes logical sense is Washington, D.C. Our nation’s capital has tremendous opportunities for Academy students — internships where students would be able to get hands-on experience in public service; partnerships with government agencies that could provide speakers and visiting professors for Academy classes; easy access to research materials and subjects; and other concrete resources that would be hard to duplicate elsewhere. D.C. also would be a magnet for top faculty.

How much money will it cost?
Roughly $205 million annually, or about 70 cents per American per year. For less than the cost of bus fare, we can build a lasting institution sends a clear message to our young people — public service matters, and it matters enough that we have built a national public university dedicated to it.

Who came up with the idea for a U.S. Public Service Academy?
The Academy is the brainchild of two Teach For America veterans, Chris Myers Asch and Shawn Raymond. After having taught in the Mississippi Delta in the mid 1990s, Asch and Raymond teamed up to create a non-profit educational organization for at-risk teenagers, the Sunflower County Freedom Project. Now, they have set their sights on helping America give its young people more opportunities to serve their country in a meaningful way.

Why do we need to do this now?
We need to build a Public Service Academy for several reasons:

1) America faces a serious shortage of public servants: The Partnership for Public Service warns of a looming “Federal brain drain” as more than 90% of the federal government’s leadership becomes eligible to retire in the next decade. Eight in ten police agencies nationwide cannot find enough qualified candidates to fill empty positions, and the Border Patrol has difficulty retaining college-educated recruits. The State Department struggles to find enough foreign language specialists in critically-needed languages such as Arabic, Korean, Chinese, and Pashtun.

2) Young Americans have a strong ethic of public service, but they are often priced out of public service: More than 70% of the 2007 collegiate freshman class expressed a desire to serve others, according to the Higher Education Research Institute, the highest rate in a generation. But according to the Project on Student Debt, the average college student graduates $20,000 in debt, which makes public service careers difficult to pursue. In the past 25 years, public policy programs such as Columbia University’s School of Public Affairs have seen a 50% drop in the percentage of graduates pursuing public service.

3) America does not offer a national civilian college for students interested in serving their nation in a civilian capacity: Nearly 15,000 students attend the nation’s five federal military service academies. Fewer than 15 percent of these students are female, while women constitute a majority (57%) of college students nationwide. In service organizations, women are an even larger majority: 58% of Peace Corps, 61% of City Year, and 71% of Teach for America participants are women. The military service academies are among the nation’s most competitive colleges. They reject tens of thousands of applicants each year, often for medical or physical reasons.

How realistic is this politically?
The Academy is not a Republican idea, it is not a Democratic idea, it is an American idea. We believe that all Americans can agree that no matter the size, no matter the policy, our public institutions should work for the American people. With courageous leaders from both sides of the political aisle, we can create a lasting institution that will stand as a monument to visionary leadership. Americans are a can-do people, and we can build this Academy.

Why not create a public service scholarship program that could be instituted at colleges around the country?
Creating a public service scholarship program is a worthy, but limited, idea. It ignores the symbolic importance of creating an institution that can raise the visibility of public service and transform how young people across the country perceive, prepare for, and pursue public service. As a prestigious, national institution, the Academy will capture the imagination of a new generation of young people and channel their energy into public service. It will send a powerful message about the value we place on public service in this country – much the way that refusing to create a Public Service Academy (while offering five military academies) sends the message to our young people that public service is somehow less important, less legitimate, or less patriotic than military service.

A scholarship program also would not be able to offer the intensive culture of service that a separate institution devoted to public service would instill in its students. Existing institutions have their own set of priorities and procedures; scholarship money would benefit individual students but would not necessarily alter the overarching mission of their institutions. Having a stand-alone campus is the only way to create a unique, unified campus culture that develops a strong esprit de corps around a public service mission. Like cadets at the military academies, Academy students would give up the traditional college life to focus on serving their nation. The result? Students gain a more intensive, more focused, more rewarding education, while the nation gains stronger, better-trained, more dedicated young leaders required to serve their country for five years.