After more than a year of wrangling about inter- and intra-departmental politics and ideological splits, the Sanford Institute of Public Policy has devised a program to offer its first doctoral degree.
Institute leaders expect to propose a Ph.D. program to the Executive Committee of the Graduate School in Fall 2004. If all goes according to plan, the school hopes six to eight would-be candidates will enter the program in 2005--just in time for the opening of Sanford's new $12-million building.
"The idea is to have an interdisciplinary program that would involve faculty from a number of departments," Director of Graduate Studies Frederick Mayer said.
The Graduate School has been awaiting the proposal for almost a year, said Lewis Siegel, dean of the Graduate School. Complications about the way to administer the program have delayed the process.
"They had to get their act together and decide what areas they wanted to pursue," Siegel said. "There's an intellectual divergence in the two ways of looking at public policy."
On one hand, some professors advocate a strong emphasis on traditional disciplines that comprise public policy studies. But the foundational areas have become "much more focused on the technique and methodology that's outside the real world," Siegel added.
The Sanford Institute's doctorate will emphasize practical application while ensuring grounding in traditional fields. Students will take approximately one-third of their classes in either sociology, economics or political science. In addition, they will choose an area of concentration within public policy, such as health policy, international development, or child and family policy.
After a year of facing the "challenges of working with multiple departments at Duke and answering all of the questions about what this is," Mayer said he finally believes the kinks are almost ironed out.
The public policy department has approved the proposal and the three affiliated departments are likely to do so, but the votes are not likely to be unanimous.
"I don't think our department is of one mind on this," said Michael Munger, chair of political science, noting the abundance and varying quality of public policy doctoral programs in the United States. "Our concern was to make sure that if Duke was going to do this, that they committed enough resources to make this a good one."
The Graduate School has indicated it will subsidize the cost of doctoral students, and Duke has enough of a reputation to attract top-notch students from the beginning, administrators said.
An external review of the department completed in February 2002 noted that Sanford did not have the faculty strength to offer a stand-alone doctoral program, but encouraged the public policy school to partner with the Nicholas School of the Environment, the School of Law and the Fuqua School of Business to offer a joint degree.
No such plans are in the works at this time, but students will likely take some classes in other schools, as public policy is an inherently interdisciplinary field.
The program will also help increase Sanford's reputation. The school is already ranked 10th in the U.S. News and World Report rankings of public affairs programs--up from 19th in 2001--but most of its peer institutions boast strong doctoral programs. Over the past three years, Sanford has also added several faculty members and stepped up its research.
As research becomes a more integrated part of the entire University, doctoral students will help Sanford keep pace. "Having Ph.D. students in residence adds to the research going on in the building and in the institution at large," Program Coordinator Katherine Flynn said.
Bruce Jentleson, director of the Sanford Institute, was in China this past week and was unavailable for comment.
The master's, an administrative degree, will remain Sanford's primary graduate program, Mayer said. A research-oriented doctorate is primarily a road to the academy or government-affiliated think tanks.
As Duke's public policy department gained in the rankings, the lack of a doctoral program became more glaring.
"Recently, it's become rather clear," Siegel said, "that in some areas the interests of the discipline are much more focused on the technique and methodology that's outside of the real world than would be interesting to those students who come in and say, 'Well, I want to really work on the economics of education and I don't want to spend two years doing that.' And there's got to be a place for that."
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