Dani Rodrik notes that the Obama administration is full of graduates from the top law schools, but nearly absent of alumni from the top policy schools. Harvard Law is heavily represented, but Harvard's Kennedy School of Government didn't get a token appointment. It's a rather sad state of affairs, if for no other reason then it aligns the incentives in favor of a longer, costlier, and less directly relevant education. And beyond that, it's a bit weird that so many folks go to law school in order to not practice law. Government is using law school as a credentialing process rather than an educational tool. That said, my sense is that policy school has become more popular in the past decade, so maybe we're simply on the cusp of its inevitable march to preeminence, but it actually would be nice if an empirically-oriented education in government and policy design became the obvious training for a career in government and policy design.
