Students at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG) launched a campaign this week to raise funds for a popular but cash-strapped program that provides aid to graduates who take low-paying public sector jobs.
The effort comes in response to Dean Joseph S. Nye’s March announcement that alumni will only be able to collect benefits under the Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP) for three years after graduation. The school previously set no limit on the length of time for which graduates could receive aid under the program.
Nye has since promised current KSG students that they will not be subject to cap on eligibility. He said in late April that he had personally raised $50,000 from donors so that the school would not have to impose a time limit on LRAP benefits next year.
Greg A. Rosenbaum ’74, who has pledged $25,000 toward LRAP, said the students’ fundraising drive could generate “the political capital necessary so that when those ultimate budget decisions are made, the program is well-funded.”
LRAP “shows the dedication of the Kennedy School to put its money where its mouth is in terms of getting its graduates to go into public service,” said Rosenbaum, who earned a master’s of public policy (MPP) degree from the school in 1978 and this summer will become chair of the Dean’s Alumni Leadership Council (DALC).
Organizers of the campaign have not set specific dollar goals, said Bridger E. McGaw ’97, a marshal of the MPP class of 2004 at the Kennedy School. “Our target is specifically on getting 100 percent of graduating students to participate.”
McGaw said around 35 students have volunteered to assist with the fundraising drive and will canvass classrooms and extracurricular events in the coming weeks. He said donors will be asked to fill out forms so that organizers will know who has yet to contribute to the campaign.
“After a couple of weeks, when we’ve figured out where the holes are, we’ll begin to individually target those students,” McGaw said. “There are a lot of relationships we’re going to tap so that everyone feels that they’ve had the opportunity to give.”
Joshua Gotbaum, who served as chief executive of The September 11th Fund, which distributed aid to victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks, has promised to match dollar-for-dollar the first $5,000 that students raise.
The donation comes in addition to Gotbaum’s $10,000 direct gift to LRAP, according to Elizabeth Z. Ginsberg, the school’s director of advancement.
HARD TIMES
When Gotbaum received his MPP in 1978, “the Kennedy School was sufficiently well-funded that we actually got fellowships instead of loans,” he said. With two Harvard degrees in hand—one from the Kennedy School, and another from the Law School—Gotbaum headed to Washington, D.C. to join President Carter’s domestic policy staff. He later held senior posts at the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget under the Clinton administration.
“The notion underlying the Kennedy School was that we should help people do public service. And one of the facts of life—sad, but nonetheless a fact—is that service in government pays less than business,” said Gotbaum, who is currently bankruptcy trustee of Hawaiian Airlines.
In 1999, because fewer Kennedy School graduates were entering the public sector, Nye loosened LRAP’s eligibility requirements so that graduates earning up to $50,000 a year in government and nonprofit jobs could collect benefits.
Since then, the program’s annual budget has increased from $44,000 to its current level of $200,000. This year, 65 alums collected aid, compared to 11 LRAP recipients a half decade ago.
And in Fiscal Year 2002, the Kennedy School ran a massive $5.9 million deficit.
“I cannot let the current open-ended commitment to LRAP undermine the school’s return to financial stability,” Nye wrote in a March e-mail to students announcing the decision to cap benefits under the program.
GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT
When Nye unveiled the LRAP eligibility changes in March, students responded with an all-night protest in front of the Kennedy School.
Last month, KSG students met separately with Nye and University President Lawrence H. Summers to voice their concerns over LRAP’s future.
Cory S. Claussen, a member of the MPP class of 2004, said both administrators expressed sympathy with the students’ goals. “We weren’t fighting a battle to win their hearts and minds,” he said.
Claussen, an organizer of the fundraising campaign, noted that a small number of students have resisted the pro-LRAP movement’s collaboration with administrators.
“You can’t change the tone of a movement overnight. And to go from angry protests to ‘let’s-all-cooperate’ in one meeting can seem artificial,” he said. “Some people see this as the poor giving to the poor.”
Students raised a modest $700 at a talent show last month, Claussen said, and 150 students donated to LRAP on Monday. He said the campaign aims to reach 60 percent participation by the end of the week.
A SCHOOL IN TRANSITION
“LRAP is a program that is pretty near to the dean’s heart and is very much a part of his vision for what the Kennedy School should do,” said Gotbaum, who is a vice chair of DALC.
Gotbaum said his gift “was an appropriate way to honor Joe Nye and to honor the Kennedy School.”
Nye will step down from his post as dean at the end of the current semester, handing the reins to David T. Ellwood ’75, the Scott T. Black professor of political economy.
“I am not ready to set goals or targets,” Ellwood wrote in an e-mail yesterday.
But he added, “I would anticipate that potential funders would be pleased, encouraged, even inspired to see that students were committed and actively engaged in fundraising for this important enterprise.”
Nye could not be reached for comment. Jesus Mena, the Kennedy School’s communications director, said the dean is traveling in the United Kingdom and is slated to appear on BBC to discuss his latest book, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics.
—Staff writer Daniel J. Hemel can be reached at hemel@fas.harvard.edu.
