Obviously, healthcare has been dominating Congress’ attention and media coverage for the past few days (as it should, $1T over 10 years is quiiiiite a bit of money and requires a lot of analysis), but I’ve noticed that there’s been a lot of continuous, under-the-radar coverage of stuff related to public service and public servants:

First (this one really flew under the radar for me) was an editorial in the WaPo outlining OMB director Peter Orzag’s memo to federal agencies advising them to streamline the hiring process for employees. Some of the suggestions include winnowing down the number of steps from 110 (one example) to… well….something more normal.

The editorial also touches upon another problem, one more directly related to USPSA: employee retention. So sayeth the editorial: “Repairing the hiring process will serve no purpose if talented employees cannot be retained.”

The Public Service Academy can be one of the tools to combat this issue. By tailoring students’ education to public service, helping them financially and making sure they stick with it for five years, we can get students on the public-service track for the long term.  The Academy will get them excited about public service, and this excitement will likely increase their job happiness, leading to careers extending beyond their five-year requirement. 

There’s also a second service-oriented bill about to start winding through Congress, this one dubbed the Roosevelt Scholars Act (link is to the Bill’s 110th Congress incarnation). In a nutshell, students would be given up to $60,000 per year toward college as they study “mission-critical” positions.

Sounds basically like what we’re trying to do, right? Nope. Not at all, in fact–it’s a very different approach. Without an Academy, the culture and atmosphere that will foster enthusiasm about public service will be lost. Students won’t be able to feed off each other’s passion and ideas. It isolates future public servants and lacks the communal spirit. The Academy will be a more-intensive and more-focused experience–things that we believe will create greater change in the future. 

In this great article forwarded to me by YACer Mark Pan, the Christian Science Monitor explores the rise of gap years and tuition grants to help students fund service projects in college.  Many schools are initiating grant-matching programs for students that participate in service or have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and 20 recently admitted Princetonians will delay academic work for a year to participate in university-funded service all across the world.

Don’t get us wrong. These are great. Service work complements academic work incredibly well, as we always say. But these aren’t the same as a Public Service Academy. For years, we’ve had scholarships and programs to encourage service, and while they are fantastic and eye-opening experiences, they don’t reach the level and commitment that would come from a Public Service Academy. Here, our students would spend every day for four years contemplating and learning, as well as practicing, public service. The entire college experience will involve service, not just one class or one year. And at the end of their four years, they’ll make an incredible commitment. Not a promise, or a goal, but a commitment. And the effects of that can be extraordinary.

It was a high-profile weekend for the Academy. First, Chris penned an op-ed for the Washington Post’s “On Leadership” blog, which you can find here. Then, the Daily Texan, the University of Texas’s student newspaper, wrote an article on the Academy’s support in Texas. Finally, the Philadelphia Inquirer published an op-ed (authored by me!) about why we should support the Academy.   

Ready to get involved with writing a letter or op-ed? I’ve gotta say, it’s pretty cool to get your name in print. E-mail me at schwenk@uspublicserviceacademy.org to find out more!