Quickie: State Department - Attracting a Different Type of Recruits?

Spencer Ackerman recently wrote As Troops Withdraw, Iraq Provincial Reconstruction Teams to Change, for The Washington Independent. The State Department’s Director of Provincial Reconstruction, Transition and Stabilization for Iraq, Wade Weems, was quoted extensively in the piece.

The Director expects a phase-out by 2011, by the way. But I’m struck by what he said about the new recruits at State.

“While he “applaud[ed] the many State Department personnel” who’ve joined the PRTs, Weems noted that the program was changing the way the department thinks of itself. “It’s attracting a different type of recruit into the State Department, people who want to go out and get their boots muddy, and who want to do the more dynamic, slightly adventurous, muddy-boot diplomacy that we at the PRTs do,” he said. “It’s inevitable that would have some effect on the State Department.”

One wonders if this is from anecdotal evidence or if this is supported by any comparative study of the composition of the last five-ten incoming A100 class over at FSI?