The Next Generation of American Elites
by Zachary Kushel, Opinions Asst. Editor on April 13, 2010 in Opinion
Once upon a time, the best and the brightest graduates of our nation’s elite universities descended on Washington. Evan Thomas and Walter Isaacson’s 1986 book, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made, chronicles the intertwined lives and careers of six policymakers deemed integral to the development of the ‘American Century.’ The book describes an era where public service was deemed the best and most respectable game in town. An ethic existed within the upper-echelons of society that pushed honorable and noble men to spend their lives hoping to shape the future direction of the country – for the better.
Over the past 30 years, for a variety of reasons, this expectation disappeared. Rather than the bulk of Ivy League graduates descending on Pennsylvania Avenue – or Langley – to serve, many booked one-way tickets to Wall Street. This transformation is best illustrated by examining the change in the demographic makeup of junior Wall Street employees over the past few decades.
Prior to the late 1980s, Wall Street was a place where industrious individuals without much of an education or elite pedigree could get ahead through hard work and dedication. One could get a job at 20 running paper orders between traders and end up, at 35, running numbers – or, more accurately, a million-dollar trading portfolio. Yet, by the late 2000s, it was nearly impossible to be given a legitimate shot of advancement without holding a degree from a ‘targeted’ school.
This shift in the makeup and ethos of those on Wall Street has not been beneficial for the nation. While Washington lost out on lifetimes of service from talented Americans, irresponsible risk management by a small number of bankers over the past few years created economic pain for countless Americans and cast a cloud over the entire industry.
But perhaps the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression has provided America with a second chance. For today’s best and brightest, some of the allure of banking has vanished. Long-term salaries and bonuses are likely to be lower than in past years. The jobs seem less secure. The lifestyle is now deemed by many to be out-of-step with American values rather than quintessentially American.
The federal government must use this opportunity to make the case to the next generation of leaders to serve. We need the help. The civilian workforce of our government is rapidly aging, many government agencies suffer from low morale, and government work still has a negative connotation for too many capable Americans.
In 2008, Senator Tom Coburn released a report highlighting startling amounts of employee absenteeism in the federal government. Between 2001 and 2007, federal employees were absent without leave from their jobs for 19.6 million hours, or the equivalent of 2.5 million missed days of work. While the vast majority of federal employees are dedicated public servants, statistics like these perpetuate the negative stereotype of government work.
Some very smart people have talked about civil service reform, including some great thinkers at this institution. We must alter incentives for government workers and change the rigidity and archaic nature of the way the civil service does business. But this issue is not politically ripe – nobody appears to be leading the charge for reform from both the leadership and grassroots levels.
Sadly, in the interim, it does not appear that the government is taking advantage of the newest pool of young leaders. One MPP1 student applied for four different internships with the U.S. federal government for the coming summer and did not even receive an interview for any of the positions. It is difficult to believe that, with over two million civilian employees, the federal government could not make good use of every single Kennedy School student who expressed a desire to work this summer.
Do we think that this Kennedy School student – who has self-identified as someone who is interested in public service and was admitted to one of the most competitive schools in the entire world – is not qualified to add value to the government agency of his/her choice? Why do we not have a program that guarantees any HKS – or Wilson, SAIS, or Maxwell – student a job with the federal government upon graduation?
This student instead took a summer position working in the private sector, and it is possible that, if the internship goes well, he may never enter the government workforce. We are making it too difficult for those who want to serve this country to do so. Perhaps many of the challenges we face today as a nation could be better tackled if our culture and policies once again encouraged some of our most talented citizens to work in public service.
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