Bok Says, Educate The Governors

If any one speech represented the goals of the Bok administration's fourth year, that address would have to be the president's third annual report to the Board of Overseers.

In a 33-page report, Bok cited the need for greater training of "professional education of the public sector," particularly in the Kennedy School of Government, to "improve the level of public service"

The speech's importance lies not in its emphasis on either the need to combat "the spectacle of corruption in high places" or the need to analyze the failure of federal programs to cure the nation's social ills, but in a large conception of educating students beyond the undergraduate and even graduate level.

Signs of the trend include increased emphasis on the Kennedy School of Government's Public Policy program--a program labeled Bok's top fund-raising priority by fund-raising czar Chase N. Peterson '54, vice president for alumni affairs and development. Other indications are promoted interest in the Nieman Fellows program and in the Business School management programs.

Although Charles U. Daly, vice president for government and community affairs, explained that Bok's report is also aimed at officials on the state and local level, congressmen would stand particularly to benefit.

Daly gives the example of the congressman who calls about "a vital matter--say the energy crisis" to show that the University is wanted to provide expertise to congressmen ill-equipped to handle certain problems.

"I don't think you can teach a congressman how to be a congressman," Daly says, "but you can teach him to be an effective member of that body."

Don K. Price, dean of the Kennedy School, said last week that fund-raising for the expanded public policy program is just starting to get off the ground.

"We've got a chairman and we're getting a network of allies to try to raise about $20 million for the program," Price said.