
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, July 26, 1990                   TAG: 9007260494
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FEDERAL JOBS

THE FEDERAL government is all thumbs these days. Failures of policy and performance abound, from runaway budget deficits to the savings-and-loan scandal to the flawed Hubble telescope to the collapsing infrastructure. So maybe it follows that Uncle Sam would have trouble recruiting people for his mid-level management jobs.

Personnel officials have experienced this difficulty for several years. But there was no way to quantify the decline in interest because the government last gave entrance examinations for professional positions in 1981. Soon afterward, the test was discarded as discriminatory against minorities, and it took years to devise a test viewed as unbiased in this regard.

When the semiannual test was given in 1981, half a million people took it. When the new test was given this June, there were 85,000 applicants.

The Office of Personnel Management views the latter figure as an aberration. After a nine-year hiatus, the new exam was given on relatively short notice. Many college graduates didn't know about it or had already made job choices. And colleges had grown accustomed to the fact that the government wasn't testing.

More likely, the dramatic difference between 500,000 and 85,000 signals trouble for the government. The implication is that young people aren't interested anymore in federal careers.

That would be no surprise. Politicians for some time now have won elections by criticizing the federal government and belittling the work its employees do. The national government has been under pressure for more than a decade to shrink its role and lay off workers; now the budgetary squeeze is even affecting defense outlays.

Government jobs don't offer the degree of security, the level of pay and benefits or the opportunities for advancement they once did. In contrast, the private sector needs people. The brightest students no longer want to take a 3 1/2-hour federal test just to qualify for a position that may not be vacant - and will be available only to those who score among the top applicants.

So what? Listen to what Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, has said about the quality of public service:

"The wishful thinkers are those who think we can make do with the mediocre. There is less room for error in our foreign relations, not more. Technology demands faster responses, not slower, to problems as widely removed as air safety and financial regulation. . . . Our very survival may literally depend on how we respond to complex threats to our environment and to our health."

All around us are problems of safety and standards that require federal intervention. The nation is not attracting the caliber of people to carry out such responsibilities. Given the cynicism and temporizing evident in Washington, we're not doing so well at higher levels of government, either. The brightest students no longer want to take a 3 1/2-hour federal test just to qualify for a position that may not be vacant.

by CNB