Kugel says that many students who initially plan careers in government are lured into outside fields by the promise of higher wages. While some students come to the K-School with the perception that the non-profit sector can barely afford to pay them, Kugel says, they often find upon graduating that such jobs can be highly profitable.

Conversely, students often discover that impressive-sounding government jobs carry little promise of financial security.

"How does the government expect to get the best people if it pays so badly?" Kugel says.

And with the high cost Harvard education--tuition alone for the master's programs costs more than $12,000 a year--many Kennedy School graduates find they have to work in non-government jobs, private or non-profit, simply to pay off their loans.

"A lot of us are going somewhere where our hearts are not really in in it, but we have to pay the loans," says Brian M. Baldwin, who studies in a joint MPP-law degree program. "The problem is that given my own tastes [non-profit] is what I would like to do, but when we come out of these programs we are heavily in debt and that tends to color my thinking."

Transition Careers

"I could probably see myself working in some agency in the Caribbean or in the U.S." says Steve Riley, a first-year MPP student. "The only drawback would be the level of pay. If you work for a bank, for example, the World Bank, the pay scale is much higher."

Other students, according to Zeckhauser, decide to use non-profit jobs as a transition to careers in government.

"It is a very good thing to do for five years if you are going to do something else later," he says.

Still others decide that government jobs are dead ends for serious public service work.

"The people here are public-policy oriented--but that doesn't mean they want to end up in a government bureacracy," says Timothy A. Wilkins, a joint MPP-law student.

And as K-school students begin to turn away from government jobs, other employers are stepping up their efforts to recruit them, Kugel says.

The newest of the University's graduate schools, the Kennedy School has yet to establish a definite "market" for its graduates, Kugel says. Many employers, she said, still do not properly understand the masters programs--a situation which can create problems for job-seeking K-School graduates.

The degree "is not quite as well defined as a law or business degree," Kugel says. "It means that we can try to sell ourselves to many more organizations but it also means that people tend to go with what they understand."

As the school's reputation has grown, she says, employers from a variety of fields have begun to look on a K-School degree as an asset.