As the new year begins, I read of a proposal for a U.S. Public Service Academy; its admissions, leadership training and post-graduate service obligations would be modeled after the five U.S. military academies.
The author of the proposal, Chris Myers Asch, a Teach for American veteran, has said that 16 senators and 93 representatives support legislation for the new academy. The legislation to create the academy is sponsored by Democratic presidential aspirant Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee has endorsed it.
There must be something in the water in Hope, Arkansas.
This proposal is a bad idea. I have studied military recruiting in preparing a new novel and have previously worked with college career counselors, so I’m qualified to explain why. The enrollment target of 1,275 entering freshmen, rising to 5,100 undergraduates, is too ambitious, and the proposed institution is unnecessary.
It would be more cost-effective to model the academy proposal after ROTC programs; ROTC covers tuition, fees and living allowances at accredited universities and provides the same summer leadership experiences as the military academies. Better, ROTC allows for “late-bloomers,” students who have waited until their junior years in college to declare their major and interest in military service.
The author made an extremely valid point: the military academies are among the most selective institutions in the land because they offer a free education, fulfill a desire to serve, and to lead. The reputation of the educational experience is unquestioned in the military and the private sector.
However, that experience can be offered less expensively without building a new national university. For example, INROADS, a national and privately sponsored internship organization, places 4,500 minority college-age youth in business, communications and engineering assignments in over 400 corporations, while also offering coaching, counseling and leadership training. INROADS has no ties to schools, but operates 50 offices across the country.
I understand why the author wanted to model a public services academy after the military academies, but I wonder why America needs a similarly elite public service institution when there are so many fine public policy, education and law enforcement programs offered in hundreds of colleges and universities. This is less true for the military. Only the military can teach military science. That is why we have military academies as well as active duty instructors teaching in ROTC programs, as well as public and private military colleges; civilians cannot teach the art and science of war.
The military academies retain another advantage over a civilian counterpart: they always find summer training assignments for Cadets, Midshipmen and the like during war and peace. There are fewer concerns about security clearances for trainees, since they will be serving in the same armed forces for the five years after they graduate. Law enforcement agencies and public school systems cannot offer the same experiences, especially to underclassmen.
In additions to comparisons with the military academies, I also have to consider a Public Service Academy against recent college start-ups in this country. It’s wise to look at the accomplishments of well-financed, recently opened post-secondary schools, then consider them against the merits of this public proposal.
The Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering opened in 2001 with a “pre-freshman” class of 30 Olin Partners, students who had turned down offers of admission from the leading engineering schools. The following year, Olin welcomed a freshman class of 75 students. According to Olin’s Web site, these students, like the original 30 Partners, were close to the cream of the crop for engineering school applicants:
They represent 34 states and one foreign country; they have an average GPA of 4.3 on a 4.0 scale; 29 are National Merit Finalists; three are U.S. Presidential Scholars; 41 were recognized by the Advanced Placement program for academic excellence; 29 were valedictorians or salutatorians; and, in a rarity for an engineering school, the class is gender balanced.
Olin is still extremely selective; their total enrollment is just under 300 students, with 75 spots expected to be available in next year’s freshman class.
Patrick Henry College, the first U.S. college founded specifically for Christian home-schooled students opened in 2000 with 92 students. Today the College enrolls 325.
Ave Maria University, the first new U.S. Catholic university in 50 years, opened its campus in 2003, also with a freshman class of 75 students. Today the university enrolls 600.
The University of California-Merced, the newest public state university, enrolls 1,800 students. According to their 2005 budget report, UC-Merced opened with 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students in the fall of 2005. Total investment in the campus at the time was $427 million, more than twice the amount proposed for the U.S. Public Service Academy.
These four schools had the benefit of generous financial support from foundations (Olin), wealthy individuals (Patrick Henry and Ave Maria) and the largest state in the union (UC-Merced).
Yet none of these schools set a first year enrollment target as ambition as the one for the proposed U.S. Public Service Academy.
If the legislation for the proposed academy were to pass with its current enrollment targets, and built in Washington DC, the institution would be critically under-funded.
It would also be an elite public school we don’t need.
Thanks so much for taking the time to examine the U.S. Public Service Academy, a little idea my friend Shawn Raymond and I have been working on for about two years. I appreciate your thoughtful critique, though of course I disagree with your conclusions. I’ll address a few of your points here.
You make an important point about the difficulty of starting up a college in this day and age. I visited Olin College recently, and far from being discouraged I was inspired by its experience. What Olin has shown, as the military academies have shown, is that students want to be more challenged, they want their college experience to mean something more than a degree, and they are willing to sacrifice the “traditional college experience” in order to be part of something in which they believe. Yes, it remains small. So too would a U.S. Public Service Academy at the beginning. It would take a minimum of ten years to approach the 5000 mark, and perhaps longer.
Like other critics, you suggest an ROTC-style scholarship program, which is a worthy, but limited, idea. It ignores the symbolic importance of creating an institution that can raise the visibility of public service and transform how young people across the country perceive, prepare for, and pursue public service. Boldness matters. To inspire young people, an idea must be bold, exciting, different. As a prestigious, national institution, the Academy will capture the imagination of a new generation of young people and channel their energy into public service. Once established, the Academy will become the nation’s flagship institution for public leadership, a locus of talent that will produce top-quality leaders for generations to come. Its impact will grow over time, as alumni rise to positions of authority in public institutions around the country. Like West Point and the military academies (and unlike prestigious scholarship programs such as the Rhodes, Truman, or Fulbright), the Academy will be woven into the fabric of American life, a powerful testimony to the importance of public service to the vitality and success or our nation.
Culture also matters. Scholarships cannot instill a culture. Existing institutions have their own set of priorities and procedures; scholarship money would benefit individual students but would neither alter the overarching mission of their institutions nor give students a transformational cohort experience. With its intense focus on service, its rigorous leadership development program, and its tough, five-year commitment, the Academy will instill a culture of service that will bond students to each other and create a network of lifetime leaders. Having a stand-alone campus is the only way to create a unique, unified campus culture that develops a strong esprit du corps around a public service mission. Like cadets at the military academies, Academy students would give up the traditional college life to focus on serving their nation. The result? Students gain a more intensive, more focused, more rewarding education, while the nation gains stronger, better-trained, more dedicated young leaders required to serve their country for five years.
Again, I thank you for your insightful comments, and I hope that you and your readers will follow our progress on our website:
http://www.uspublicserviceacademy.org
Take care,
Chris
I see the many points you make but I want to counter the idea that you see this as unnecessary. As a current college student I can only wish that the USPSA had been around when I was searching through college options. An affordable, high-qaulity, education is very hard to find right now and that is exactly what the USPSA would provide. Along with affordable education the USPSA would provide a beacon of hope; that public service is a respectable field to venture into and that the nation does see the importance of it. I respect the millitary academies and all that they provide; but I think a civilian counterpart is vital to the development of a more efficent country.
I have to agree that the USPSA is a great idea. i am a member of the minority of students who needed to be challenged in a non-traditional fashion. unfortunately this was not available to me in the 80’s, so i turned to the Navy instead. I don’t regret that and it has helped during my public service careers, but wouldn’t an opportunity to do so in a academic environment have been a wonderful option?
I wonder if the USPSA should be a physical presence or a virtual one, programs at existing learning institutions but either way believe it is a good idea.