Pardee RAND Graduate School

The Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School (PRGS) is a private, higher-education institution that offers doctoral studies in policy analysis and practical experience working on RAND research projects to solve current public policy problems. Its campus is co-located with the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research institution in Santa Monica, California.

PRGS is unique in American higher education. It was founded in 1970 as one of the original eight graduate programs in public policy analysis. PRGS was the only program specializing in the Ph.D. It is also the only one based at a public policy research institute—the Santa Monica, California-based RAND Corporation—which invented many of the analytical tools of public policy analysis. PRGS doctoral students take advanced courses in such fields as economics, statistics, political science, and the social sciences. They also work part-time as members of RAND's interdisciplinary research teams, which is how they earn their fellowships.

PRGS offers the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in policy analysis. The Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) degree is awarded to students after two years of coursework and partial completion of the Ph.D. requirements. The first doctorate was awarded in 1974. As of January 2012, PRGS has awarded 281 Ph.D. degrees. PRGS is the largest policy Ph.D. program in the United States.

David Johnson

PRGS Student

After spending years trying to decide between graduate programs in everything ranging from math to gender studies to systems biology, looking for a topic that was worth working on for years to the exclusion of everything else, I discovered a phenomenal loophole at RAND. Here, I have the opportunity to get a doctorate in public policy while tackling other interesting issues, building up years of very real work experience and expertise in multiple disciplines alongside the dissertation.

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