Political science professor Donald Kettl is what many consider to be a true scholar of "how government really works," -- a label that has earned him some very loyal admirers.
Kettl, who spoke Friday as part of the Fox Leadership program, was a professor of political science and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before coming to Penn.
The award-winning author and native Philadelphian admitted to not having followed the advice he now gives to students about diverging from a set academic path.
"I started knowing in advance what I wanted, and I stuck with it, which is not something I recommend," he said.
In a time when everyone was preparing to go to law school or medical school, Kettl was studying then-unfashionable political science at Yale.
When he rejected an acceptance to Harvard Law School and decided to further his studies on political science, his father thought he was crazy.
"It took my dad about 10 years to figure out what I was doing," Kettl said.
On careers, Kettl said there was no better way of being unhappy than finding something that just does not fit. He advised students to find what they like and get people to pay them for doing it.
Kettl's career has taught him about the workings of government. In his speech, he focused particularly on government efficiency.
He believes the challenge of better government is the "effective partnership between private contractors and the government" because it is difficult to differentiate between the two in certain cases.
Specifically, Kettl referred to cases in which health care workers serviced Medicaid patients and regular patients at the same time, blurring the lines between the private and public sectors.
Kettl also mentioned current issues, however he noted that he believes that while Social Security is a very important issue, a worse problem facing society is the future of Medicaid -- medical insurance for low-income families.
"You think Social Security is bad? Look at Medicare. You think Medicare is bad? Look at Medicaid," he told students.
According to Kettl, the Bush administration's solution for Medicaid is to "dump this on the states."
"What we have here is a demographic time bomb," Kettl said. "You save people from dying of heart disease and they get older and eventually get Alzheimer's ... so two-thirds of all the money in Medicaid goes to nursing homes."
