Students crowded Jesse Wrench Auditorium on Friday afternoon to hear professor Hal G. Rainey present his lecture on the modern challenges of the civil service.
Rainey, an Alumni Foundation Distinguished professor of public administration and policy, visited from the University of Georgia to participate in the Monroe-Paine Distinguished Lectures in Public Affairs series.
The talk focused on the comparisons made between the public and private sector and the way Americans view the bureaucratic section of their government.
“The idea that Washington has filled up with a lot of pointless bureaucrats shuffling papers around is a gross stereotype,” Rainey said.
Rainey said although there is inefficiency in the civil service, and it can be improved, the amount of negative press it receives is disproportional.
“We constantly have to criticize the government, it’s part of our job,” Rainey said. “But it also gives the impression that we have a constantly malfunctioning government and malfunctioning people inside of it.”
Because of this bad press and attitude towards the bureaucracy, Rainey called public servants “knights in fragile armor” that are not fully protected from the constant criticism hurled their way.
He cited declining confidence in governmental organizations as the cause for a lack of new talent in the agencies. As the baby boomer generation retires, new directors and supervisors will need to step up and fill the vacated positions.
“There is a fairly rapid decline in managerial skills, and a lot of the experienced talent is leaving, either to retire or to switch to the private sector,” Rainey said.
The public sector cannot offer salaries as high as private companies, and this conflict pits the two sectors against each other in the search for talent, but Rainey stated that success lies in the cooperation of the groups.
“Collaboration between the government and private business has led to some of the greatest innovations of our time, and they’ve all required symbiosis of freedom,” Rainey said. “The freedom of democracy and the freedom of enterprise tend to go together.”
To combat all the issues facing the public sector, Rainey called for a wider distribution of information about the functions of the bureaucracy. He said he believes the best way to break the stereotype of an inefficient government is to educate and inform the people whose lives are affected by it everyday.
“We all hear about the problems,” Rainey said. “But we really don’t hear about the successes of the civil service in the media.”
Although many students trickled out during the beginning of the lecture after getting their extra credit, those that stayed were able to discuss the topics with Rainey in a 30-minute question and answer session.
“I stayed through the lecture after getting my extra credit because I thought it was rude to get up and interrupt his talk,” sophomore Neal Cross said. “It turned out to be somewhat interesting, even if it doesn’t apply to my major.”
Other students attended to expand their knowledge about the intricacies of American government. MU graduate student Kexin Jiang moved to Columbia from China last month and was intrigued by the differences between the two countries.
“I thought it was interesting how public sector workers receive less compensation than those in the private sector in the U.S.,” Jiang said. “In China and other governments around the world, it’s the opposite.”
The lecture was recorded by C-SPAN and will run on the channel at an unspecified time.
