Students angle for government jobs - but will influx last?

Suddenly, the federal government is cool again.

Ask high school freshmen clamoring to join the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, or seniors who are reconsidering possible majors or enlisting with the Marines.

Watch undergrads line up at college career fairs to schmooze with recruiters from the Central Intelligence Agency or the US State Department. And visit Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where graduate students are angling for jobs at the Office of Homeland Security.

Since Sept. 11, polls show respect for government and interest in public-service careers among America's youth have hit levels rarely seen since President John F. Kennedy's "New Frontier" of the 1960s.

And it's not just young people: Surveys show all Americans express greater confidence in national leaders since the attacks and are more likely to describe it as "our government" rather than "the government."

"The general devaluation of government since Vietnam and Watergate is temporarily on hold," says Joseph Nye, dean of the Kennedy School. "We just don't know how long it will last."

That leaves everyone from federal hiring managers to civics teachers, who could barely interest most students in government a semester ago, scrambling to capitalize on this new respect.

Government agencies, including the CIA, began recruiting more aggressively on campuses even before the attacks, spurred by the prospect of half of executive-level federal employees becoming eligible to retire in the next five years. They tried slick brochures and a speedier hiring process.

But a boom economy in which the government simply couldn't match private-sector salaries left the agencies with mixed success. Students looking for exciting job opportunities in the post-cold-war world often signed up with international consulting firms and relief groups rather than the Foreign Service. Privatization and hiring freezes in domestic agencies drove others into better-paying jobs in business. And attack politics soured many potential hires on the idea of a Washington-based career.

At the Kennedy School, for example, three-quarters of graduates went to work for the government in 1980, yet in recent years, only a third have done so.

So the recent shift, driven by a slumping economy and a surge in patriotism among young Americans, is heartening news to those trying to hire the government's future workforce. Nationwide, the number of undergraduates who told pollsters from Harvard's Institute of Politics that they trust the federal government rose from 36 percent last year to 60 percent this fall. And a third of young people surveyed by the Council for Excellence in Government now express interest in federal service.

"Sept. 11 makes you look at the world and how you can change it," says Taylor Begley, a high school senior in Valley Stream, N.Y. Ms. Begley now wants to study political science in Washington when she graduates.

That shift in perspective has been particularly noticeable with the CIA, which reported a tenfold increase in applications - from 500 to 5,000 a week - immediately after the attacks.

Meanwhile, all federal agencies involved in national security and health, ranging from the FBI to the Customs Service, report greater interest as a result of the World Trade Center and anthrax attacks, says Kay Carol James, director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which oversees federal hiring.

Schools at every level also feel the reverberations of Sept. 11:

• At the Kennedy School, the number of students applying for a presidential management internship in the federal government rose from 55 last year to 76 this fall. Students now say that all the sudden changes brought about by the terrorist attacks could bode well for careers with the government.

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