Restoring Government Service as a Valued and Honored Profession

• Published date: 01 March 2012
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2011.02560.x
• Date: 01 March 2012
• Author: James B. Steinberg

Perspective

James B. Steinberg is dean of the

Maxwell School at Syracuse University

and University Professor of Social Science,

International Affairs and Law. Before

becoming dean, he served as U.S. deputy

secretary of state. From 2005 to 2008, he

was dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School

of Public Affairs at the University of Texas

at Austin, and from 2001 to 2005, he

was director of foreign policy studies at

the Brookings Institution. During the Bill

Clinton administration, Mr. Steinberg served

as deputy national security advisor and

director of the U.S. Department of State’s

policy planning staff.

E-mail: Jimsteinberg@maxwell.syr.edu

Restoring Government Service as a Valued and Honored Profession 175

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 72, Iss. 2, pp. 175–176. © 2012 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.111/j.1540-6210.2011.02560.x.

James B. Steinberg

Syracuse University

My recent return to academic life following

two and half years at the U.S. State Depart-

ment (and a series of stints in the federal

government dating back to the mid-1970s) of‌f ers an

opportunity to ref‌l ect on the future of public service

at this challenging moment in our nation’s histor y. For

me, two basic facts stand out—the classic glass-half-

full, glass-half-empty paradigm. On the optimistic

side, I see here at Syracuse University (as I did at

the University of Texas) a remarkable and sustained

commitment among young men and women to f‌i nd

careers that ref‌l ect the values of citizenship and public

service. Just look at the number of college under-

graduates around the country who seek opportunities

with programs such as Teach for America, the Peace

Corps, and AmeriCorps. At the Maxwell School,

the number of applications for graduate programs in

public administration and especially in international

af‌f airs has been increasing, an experience that I know

is shared by many of our peer programs across the

country.

 at’s the good news. More worrisome is the growing

disjuncture between the appetite for public service

and the eagerness to serve in government, especially

at the federal level. Although the sample size is small,

and so conclusions must be cautious, we have seen at

Maxwell a stagnation in the number of our gradu-

ates who go into the government (and a real decline

among our graduate international af‌f airs students),

along with a corresponding increase in the number

who seek and f‌i nd jobs in the nonprof‌i t sector.  is

is ref‌l ected in an increased demand for courses in

nonprof‌i t management and exposure to internship

opportunities with nongovernmental organizations.

For a variety of reasons, public-service-minded stu-

dents increasingly seem convinced that government

service is not a good path to realize their public service

aspirations.

From my vantage point, there are a number of

explanations for this phenomenon. Entry-level jobs

in government are hard to get and often not very

challenging, the prospects for quick and reliable

promotion for talented employees uncertain, and

opportunities for in-service professional development

limited. For the best graduate students, salaries in the

public sector lag those in the private sector, and the

gap widens over the course of a career.  ese obstacles

to attracting the best talent to government service are

relatively easy to measure. But I believe that there is

another important contributing cause: the sustained

political assault on the value of government itself

and, by implication, the value of government service.

Put simply, government service no longer is seen as a

valued and honored profession.

 ese concerns, of course, are not new. More than 20

years ago, Paul Volcker chaired the National Commis-

sion on Public Service, whose 1989 report concluded

that there were “three main threats to the health of

the public service: public attitudes, political leadership

and internal management systems.  ese threats were

seen as eroding the ability of government to function

ef‌f ectively at the same time that demands on govern-

ment were growing” (xviii).

Fourteen years later, the second Volcker Commission

concluded that,

 e notion of pu blic service, once a noble

calling proudly pursued by the most talented

Americans of every generation, draws an

indif‌f erent response from today’s young people

and repels many of the country’s leading private

citizens.  ose with policy responsibility f‌i nd

their decisionmaking frustrated by overlapping

jurisdictions, competing special interests, and

sluggish administrative response.  ose who

enter the civil service often f‌i nd themselves

trapped in a maze of rules and regulations that

thwart their personal development and stif‌l e

their creativity.  e best are underpaid; the

worst, overpaid. Too many of the most talented

leave the public service too early; too many of

the least talented stay too long. (2003, 1)

Restoring Government Service as a Valued

and Honored Profession