Making Change Last

Fifty years from now, when I think about Harvard on Election Night 2008, what I’ll remember is a hundreds-strong crowd of students shouting and dancing, turning to and embracing their friends in one massive, mutual celebration. The festivities, of course, were partisan, but I also like to think that the scene, and the election in general, represented a potential that is nonpartisan—an investment in and excitement about government that I personally had never experienced before and had rarely witnessed among my peers.

As the Obama administration turns to the difficult tasks of governance and students turn their minds to daily, more immediate concerns, it is our responsibility to make sure that this initial enthusiasm doesn’t dissipate without leaving behind a lasting monument. The creation of a U.S. Public Service Academy can be our generation’s contribution, an institution that embodies our “call to service.”

The USPSA is a civilian counterpart to our military academies. But, instead of military officers, the academy will admit America’s best and brightest students and eventually produce an entire generation of effective and efficient leaders in local, state, and national government. Via a competitive admissions process akin to the military academies—where admissions rates can be lower than Harvard’s—students would earn a four-year scholarship to study liberal arts as well as a specific public service field. At its full capacity, the academy would serve approximately 5000 students a year; upon graduation, these students will fulfill a five-year service requirement in areas of critical need: teaching in a rural school in Mississippi, for instance, or working for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Simultaneously, our generation has shown interest in public service: A 2008 poll by Social Sphere Strategies shows that young people aged 18 to 29 supported the creation of the U.S. Public Service Academy by a margin of more than seven to one. Yet study after study has demonstrated that students are being priced out of public service by expensive undergraduate and graduate educations or turned off by the declining prestige of working in government. A study by the Financial Times, for example, found that even at programs like Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where service-oriented careers are emphasized, the percentage of graduates who enter public service following graduation has dropped by half in just one generation. In Harvard’s Class of 2008, OCS’s senior survey results indicate that just two percent of seniors are employed in government at graduation.

Of course, students need not serve directly in government to be conscientious citizens. There are many venues by which students have already embraced and are enthusiastically answering the call to service: Interest in nonprofit careers and programs such as Teach for America has steadily increased at Harvard in past years. But all conscientious citizens, regardless of their personal and career choices, must also recognize that recruiting motivated and talented public servants is critical to the efficiency and effectiveness of our government.

And that is part of the beauty of a national public service academy: Students who do not apply or attend will still understand the significance inherent in its establishment. By creating an American institution devoted entirely to public service, the government sends the message that public service is important to the country and is a worthy investment. By supporting the creation of the academy, students demonstrate their belief in better government.

Scholarship programs or financial aid incentives that encourage public service, while important, fail to send as clear and salient a message: that public service is a priority not only for the select few who are interested in or even aware of these programs, but also for every American citizen.

The national public service academy was first championed by George Washington. Retired from his own stint of government service, and living out his days at Mt. Vernon, he still regaled visitors with a plan for a national college that would train America’s future government leaders. The idea was recorded in his will but never came to fruition. Now is the time to fulfill Washington’s original call to service.


Gracye Y. Cheng ’10, a former Fifteen Minutes Associate Chair, is a history and literature, and sociology concentrator in Eliot House.