Our RAND Partnership

For more than 50 years, a world-class doctoral program integrated into the research operations of the RAND Corporation has made for a one-of-a-kind partnership.

The Pardee RAND Graduate School is the first — and only — public policy graduate program housed within a global policy-research organization: the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit with more than 70 years of experience of strengthening public policy through research and analysis.

Our relationship is symbiotic. Policy experiments and methodological innovations within Pardee RAND feed into RAND research, which in turn drives Pardee RAND curricula, fuels intellectual growth, and enables a one-of-a-kind educational experience.

RAND research inspires innovative ideas for students’ dissertation topics; it raises new policy questions to be answered, and graduate work generates new approaches for solving them.

Whereas traditional graduate training is usually grounded in a single discipline, policy problems are inevitably cross-disciplinary. The Pardee RAND curriculum reflects this reality while flipping the traditional graduate model of “learn first, apply later” by integrating academic theory with real work alongside and in tandem with RAND researchers.

It’s a partnership and structure that possesses the powerful advantage of enhancing students’ motivation to learn while sharpening the sense of purpose and relevance in learning.

RAND Corporation

The RAND Corporation offers Pardee RAND students access to more than 1,000 of the world’s foremost policy experts, who collaborate with students on projects for clients worldwide.

By working at RAND, our students develop a sophisticated understanding of the role analysis plays in real policy problems. Doctoral students participate as full-fledged members of interdisciplinary research teams throughout their degree program.

This unique experience provides students with insights and practical experience that are unmatched among their counterparts at other graduate schools.

Pardee RAND

Pardee RAND Graduate School injects a rich diversity of experience and new perspectives to RAND project teams and research agendas, keeping RAND at the forefront of methodological advances and the frontiers of policy innovation.

The school offers RAND research staff the opportunity to teach courses and workshops, serve on dissertation committees, and engage with and mentor the next generation of policy experts.

Pardee RAND remains one of the key differentiators that make RAND a truly unique entity: no other stand-alone research organization is home to a graduate school.