57. Memorandum From Secretary of State Rusk to the Deputy Under Secretary of State for Administration (Orrick)1
This is a personal observation on your memorandum of August 20 about the recruitment of junior Foreign Service officers.2 It should not be taken as policy guidance.
The arguments submitted in behalf of an increased stress on graduate study or equivalent work experience have been used before. But I recall that about eight years ago we shifted emphasis from graduate studies to the “fresh B.A.”. We must have had what we thought were good reasons at that time.
My guess is that this is one of those arguments which swings like a pendulum. Other instances: geographic versus functional organization, or college faculty arguments about letter or number grades.
I would not want to be quoted on this but there are one or two strong arguments in favor of recruiting younger people that I draw out of my experience. My impression is that graduate school experience tends to snuff out the “gleam in the eye” of many young people who finish college with a real spirit about making a contribution in some worthwhile undertaking. My guess is that, in graduate schools, they get closer to marriage and closer to jobs in this country; it might even be that in most graduate schools a “gleam in the eye” is a sign of naivete. Further, I have seen relatively few courses (and I have seen a great many) which give a highly intelligent young person much more than he could get out of reading some good books in a fraction of the time and cost. Finally, I am not very sure that what the professors say will be very relevant to the problems young people will encounter in the Foreign Service.
However, my only suggestion at this time is that you get somebody to dig out the policy consideration which threw the emphasis upon undergraduate work some years ago and then we can talk about it.
Incidentally, I do feel strongly that FSOs, after entering the Service, should be evaluated and promoted on the basis of work performed in the Service and the graduate degrees should bear no relevance after entry. The principal reason for this is that graduate degrees come a dime a dozen and high quality work comes from often unlikely places.