Kennedy school still suffers from perception that train House/Senate aides and future DMV staffers. Its faculty, in my opinion, is dominated by deposed, defeated or otherwise out-of-work political types and journalists needing a pleasant place to serve out their exile before resuming power.

Does the world need such a school? Perhaps.

The government department, for better or worse, produces traditional academic scholarship. (The contempt economists have for sociology is misplaced. Political science is easily the junkiest, least reputable social science of them all.)

I don't see what the government department stands to gain from a merger. And I don't see why Kennedy school people have the slightest interest in anything coming out of the government department.

The only semi-successful merger of a traditional academic department with a professional school is Chicago's econ department and the business school's finance faculty. The econ department enjoys higher prestige but the finance guys all run hedge funds attempting to make money off security mispricings.

Now this is my kind of comment. Very thoughtful. Note that the proposed merger is proposed only in the heads of the grad students. But let me tell you, the B school model is a powerful one, I wouldn't be surprised if MPA departments didn't start taking it very seriously.