getting a liberal education far beyond the required curriculum of college. eventually i returned to nyu, took additional courses at night, and completed my doctorate. over the past six decades i followed a type of career path that many of you will follow, but with a twenty - first - century cast. i had two careers and four jobs - one as a musician, one as a private consultant, and two in government. but the world has changed since i was your age, and the pace of change has quickened. today it is rare that one will finish school and then engage in the same job until retirement, which was the general experience of generations past. many of you will switch professions once, possibly many times. almost all of you will have several jobs, some many jobs. to succeed, you will soon learn, as i did, the importance of a solid foundation in the basics of education - literacy, both verbal and numerical, and communication skills. but beyond that you will need to acquire the on - the - job skills that you will need as you move from one job to another. at some point, almost all of you will lose a job and will want to be reemployed as quickly and as productively as possible. that means you will need the capability of learning a wholly new activity. the current workforce is increasingly turning to community colleges to prepare for new professions and new jobs. today, almost a third of those enrolled in community colleges are thirty years old and older. so - called adult education was a rarity in my youth ; today it is widespread. most of you probably will be engaged in some form of learning through most of your working lives. already numerous corporations have regularly scheduled classes in basic and advanced subjects directly and indirectly related to job requirements. such corporate universities, as they are called, are growing rapidly, and i suspect that, as you join the workforce, you will have the sensation that you never left school. that is why it is so critical that you productively employ your current learning experiences to create the base capabilities necessary for continuing your education into your mature years. learning, of course, need not be formal. you can engage in it on your own. in generations past, much learning occurred outside a classroom. i am fascinated by the eloquent and literate letters written by some civil war enlisted personnel, who i doubt had formal schooling beyond the age of ten. many of these soldiers obviously learned to read and discovered a whole new world of ideas

the quality and quantity of research and analysis produced by the fed ’ s research staff. conclusion gpra provides the opportunity for a major improvement in the management and effectiveness of federal agencies. it provides the impetus for agencies to clarify their missions and objectives, measure their performance better and improve their efficiency and effectiveness. it must, however, avoid the risk of becoming, like some previous efforts to improve government management, largely a paper exercise which produces many numbers and reports but few real results. the federal reserve welcomes the opportunity to participate in the gpra process. we will work hard to fulfill the vision of the framers of the act and avoid the pitfalls. we will have to respond in ways that are appropriate to the federal reserve ’ s diverse missions and decentralized structure. i believe we have made significant progress toward the gpra - type strategic planning and are on the track to making more in the immediate future.