Nine Ph.Ds Graduate from RAND

Reeve T. Schley
Mirror staff writer

   In front of a panoramic view of Marina Del Rey, the RAND Graduate School, awarded nine Ph.Ds in policy analysis on Saturday, June 22.
   The RAND Corporation, the Santa Monica think tank that has been at the forefront of U.S. policy devlopment since its founding in 1948, has awarded 154 doctorates in policy analysis since 1970.
   Graduates of the four-year Ph.D program demand six figure salaries after taking courses in economics, statistics, and the behavioral sciences, as well as working with RAND analysts on a variety of problems.
   “I wanted to work on big social issues,” said Jerry Jacobson, a graduate of the University of California and a student at RAND who eschewed a high salary job in Silicon Valley for the Ph.D program.  He said in one week he assessed Indonesia’s health care system, Medicare in the United States, and dealt with local law enforcement issues.
   “One of the workshops was on communities and violence. We went out and interviewed everyone from gun control activists to police leaders, from community leaders to business people. We learned how all of them will have to be part of the solutions,” he said.
   The school is the only accredited academic institution based at a think tank in the United States, and enrolls about 20 new students a year with a medium GRE score of 760.
   “We don’t go by the numbers,” says Paul Koegel, Associate Director of RAND Health, a health research program. “We look for creativity, the ability to think about new issues in new ways. We seek students with a combination of passion and discipline – the passion to change the world for the better, and the discipline to carry forth the new research that will be needed to do so.”
   Average yearly tuition is $14,500, but students receive $36,000 a year for working with RAND researchers as part of their on-the-job training.
   Dissertations cover such esoteric subjects as “the application of private sector finance tools to government decisions about communications satellite replacement,” to a “new simulation methodology for analyzing Kosovo-style conflicts.”
   Donned in black robes and hats, the nine graduates listened to a series of speakers talk about RAND’s formula for success.
   “If you can think up a problem the solution is so easy it can be solved,” said Thomas C. Shelling a professor at the Maryland School of Public Affairs and elected member of the National Academy of Scientists.
   Shelling spoke of such RAND accomplishments as putting locks on nuclear bombs, and setting up a hotline between the USSR and the United States during the Cold War. Until that point, he said, it took 36 hours for the President and Prime Minister to get in touch with each other.
   President and CEO of RAND, James A. Thompson, also addressed the small crowd. “RAND Graduate School is a special place, producing graduates who received the intellectual equivalent of Special Forces training,” Thompson said. “Now more than any time in recent years, the international community needs you to go into action.”
   Dean of the graduate school, Robert Klitgaard, who has taught at both Harvard and Yale, said that RAND offers more job training than other institutions, such as Harvard, as its students work as well as study.
   “Many of our new courses and our research efforts can be seen as ways to change the way people think about public policy research, and even public policy,” Klitgaard said. “You get the best research training in our classrooms, and you get to apply it to real problems with RAND mentors and real clients.”