New York University, [as well as Harvard] have excellent schools of public admin and policy. Why not partner with who is already in business, and offer scholarships through these existing programs?

1) since they mention debt and ‘less burden’ this means that govt jobs will not pay appreciably more than they do now. So their solution is to offer welfare to candidates instead of making these salaries enough to compete in an open market with other comparable positions. I’m not sure turning a stint at a govt job into a charity situation is the solution.

2) I’ve heard this compared to the ‘ROTC’. However, recruiting for the army is not like recruiting for various govt. depts for public service. For one thing, the military has age/gender restrictions [women can't yet serve in active combat and you can't join the military past a certain age]. As far as I know, this is not the case for public service, and some choose a public career as a second career. Who exactly do these scholarships involve? As far as I know, they can’t place age restrictions on govt service.

If they wish to recruit, then they could do something like the teaching programs that currently exist to recruit teachers. I’m sure there are out of work engineers and computer programmers that would take them up on it, or other professionals in areas that have experienced layoffs. However again, I have reservations about getting people especially this huge number they quote, into public service on the premise they’ll make less money, in return for a scholarship.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 31, 2009
Contact: Samantha Donaldson
202-775-9111

PARTNERSHIP FOR PUBLIC SERVICE APPLAUDS REPS. DAVID PRICE AND MICHAEL CASTLE FOR INTRODUCING THE “ROOSEVELT SCHOLARS ACT OF 2009”

Washington, D.C. – Partnership for Public Service President and CEO Max Stier released the following statement commending Reps. David Price (D-NC) and Michael Castle (R-DE) for introducing the Roosevelt Scholars Act of 2009, legislation that creates an elite graduate school scholarship program with a unique payback – a commitment to serve our country in mission-critical federal jobs.

“We applaud Representatives Price and Castle for their leadership in introducing the Roosevelt Scholars Act of 2009. In the coming years, the federal government needs to fill more than 200,000 mission-critical jobs. Similar to the military’s largely successful ROTC program, Roosevelt Scholars will help make federal service a more affordable and attractive career option for our nation’s top talent. It also helps our government build and improve the caliber of the federal workforce.”

The Roosevelt Scholars Act will establish a small nonprofit foundation to manage the scholarship program and award scholarships to graduate students. Recipients will receive tuition, support for room and board, and a small stipend for each year they are enrolled in graduate degree programs consistent with a list of approved mission-critical occupations such as law, security and enforcement, public health, science, engineering and accounting. Upon graduation, Roosevelt Scholars will be required to spend three to five years working in the federal civil service.

The Partnership for Public Service works to revitalize the federal government by inspiring a new generation to serve and by transforming the way government works. Visit ourpublicservice.org/roosevelt for more information.

Better to invest that money to build an institution, something permanent, something visible, something that Americans can be proud of they way we are proud of our military academies. There’s already a bill in Congress to create a “civilian West Point” called the U.S. Public Service Academy (HR 2102). That’s where Congress should put its focus!