On-the-Job Training

On-the-job training (OJT) is an academic requirement of Pardee RAND degree programs. While pursuing their graduate degree, all students work on interdisciplinary RAND research teams in a variety of topical and methodological areas, and this work helps fund their research fellowship. Students learn policy analysis by actually analyzing policy: working on problems for real clients in real time that range from the inner city to outer space. They accumulate practical and professional experience that employers in government, business, non-profit organizations and academia value highly.

Pardee RAND has the distinction of being the only policy school in the United States based at a public policy research institute. The RAND Corporation offers Pardee RAND students access to more than 1,000 of the world’s foremost policy experts, who hire students on projects for RAND clients in the United States and beyond. Pardee RAND is co-located with RAND’s headquarters in Santa Monica, California, but students work with researchers across all RAND offices.

Work on RAND research projects is what enables Pardee RAND students to develop a sophisticated understanding of the role analysis plays in addressing real policy problems and to learn by doing. Our students benefit from having multiple mentors and working on a wide variety of research teams during their time in the program; by contrast, students in traditional policy Ph.D. programs are typically assigned one faculty mentor and focus their work more narrowly.

Students participate in RAND's internal labor market along with all other members of the research staff. To successfully navigate the internal labor market requires a degree of entrepreneurship that other programs may not require. Students who are curious, interested in exploring the application of methods across a broad policy space, willing to be flexible, and eager to grow do well here. The unique Pardee RAND experience provides them with insights and practical experience that are unmatched by other graduate schools.

Students may start working on project teams right away, as early as their first couple of weeks in the program. While individual effort is rewarded, Pardee RAND has built a support network to assist students in their search for work. In their first quarter, students may participate in an OJT Workshop that is designed to provide coaching on the key factors that enable success in the RAND internal market. Students find OJT by matches made during the admissions process, their own direct engagement with researchers, developing informal networks, and other RAND mechanisms.

Additionally, we employ selected students as “OJT Brokers” to serve as liaisons between the school and RAND Research Divisions and to advise and mentor students on how to find and conduct OJT. The Brokers share notices of OJT opportunities with Pardee RAND students and help RAND researchers identify qualified students for their projects. Brokers also advise students on how to approach researchers, which researchers offer specific types of work, which networks to join and offer coaching and mentoring for how to be a research professional at RAND.

Students develop and apply numerous research skills through OJT and typically engage in a wide range of research as they work side-by-side RAND experts throughout their program. Work may include conducting literature reviews, aggregating and managing data, coding, programming, modeling, designing surveys, conducting interviews and focus groups, managing projects, designing and giving presentations, and drafting and writing reports, to name a few.

Many students utilize skillsets they had prior to starting the program, especially in the beginning, and build on these tools and methodologies as they advance through the program. Students bring a variety of unique skills, experiences and subject matter expertise to their project work, including regional expertise, cutting-edge methodological skills, professional experience at other organizations, and a range of degrees.

Additionally, students often co-author research findings, resulting in peer-reviewed journal articles as well as RAND reports. On average, our Ph.D. students graduate with seven publications from their time in the program.

Through participation in RAND research projects and OJT, students can acquire the following skills:

Pardee RAND research fellowships provide funds to help cover tuition and, for the Ph.D. program, living expenses. Each M.Phil. and Ph.D. student earns their research fellowship by working a target number of days each year on RAND projects of their choice. This is both an academic requirement (150 days for the M.Phil. and 300 days for the Ph.D.) and a way to fund their education. Students can earn income to support themselves at levels that equal or exceed most other graduate policy programs. They are paid a daily rate that exceeds most other graduate policy programs and have the ability to work more than their requirements at any given time. This opens up the possibility of earning more if they are able to find additional work.

To receive their full research fellowships, students must perform a minimum amount of OJT each year (including during the summer) and may work more days to earn extra income. A day of work is 8 hours and students frequently work on multiple projects at once (3-5 is common).

Dissertation ideas and mentorship support often evolve from OJT project work conducted in a Ph.D. student's first two or three years at Pardee RAND. Through OJT, students are exposed to dozens of research topic areas, methodologies, data sets, and experts. These experiences may spark thoughts on unique areas of research to explore in a dissertation as well as connections to researchers who can advise and serve on a dissertation committee. Sometimes, project work—especially if grant funded—can lead directly to a dissertation, but this is not always the case.

RAND’s research staff covers a multitude of disciplines, including anthropologists, economists, data scientists, sociologists, psychologists, engineers, historians, statisticians, mathematicians, engineers, computer scientists and beyond. Multidisciplinary teams form around each client-funded project. The project can consist of two people with a small budget of $150K or a multi-year, multi-million-dollar budget with 25 or more people. The composition depends on the type of analysis to be conducted.

Each year, RAND performs work for more than 400 clients and grantmakers, including government agencies, international organizations, and foundations. RAND also receives gifts from donors to help deliver fact-based, actionable solutions grounded in rigorous analysis. Our single largest funder of research in recent years has been the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But our four security and defense research divisions together make up a little over fifty percent of our funding.

Research and analysis are conducted by three divisions that address social and economic policy issues, both in the U.S. and overseas: Education and Labor, Health Care, and Social and Economic Well-Being, as well as four federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) that focus on U.S. national security policy issues: Army, Homeland Security, National Security, and Project Air Force. Students work across research areas and throughout the research divisions.

International students are valuable contributors to RAND research work, providing not only the same strong intellectual preparation in analytic tools and methods all students bring, but also unique global perspectives, regional expertise, and even language skills. Two limitations may come into play, however.

First, some of RAND’s national security and/or homeland security work requires a U.S. security clearance or fitness available only to U.S. citizens. Nonetheless, projects may carve out pieces for those who are not clearance eligible.

Second, international students, under their F-1 visas, are limited to working no more than 20 hours per week when classes are in session. However, there are mechanisms established by the U.S. government which enable them to lift this 20-hour limit, and they can work more hours during term breaks and throughout the summer.