The Public Policy Program at Cornell, revisited

Known as the Policy Analysis and Management, or PAM, the Public Policy program at Cornell is often mistaken for a Business and Policy program. This, probably because of the "Management" part of the name. It was later explained to us that the "Management" portion of the name referred not to Business Management, but to the management and oversight of government programs.

Here's the question that every PAM student has to sooner or later answer to parents, friends, or an employer: What does a PAM student learn?

In my opinion, the program has a three-fold purpose:

1. Introduce students to the issues in Public Policy, the actors and interests, as well as the way decisions are made. They learn to to ask questions like policy analysts, and analyze the answers that are already there.

2. Understand why the Government is involved in making decisions that affect individuals, as well as the reasons why it chooses one way over another. Because many professors in the department have an Economics background, students learn that incentives, especially economic ones, are crucial in government decision-making.

3. Help Answer the "why" behind decisions, using qualitative and quantitative skills and tools.

The cool thing is that because every area of Life is tied to Public Policy (how you feel about that will depends on your political leaning), students are able to use
these skills as the ground work to apply it to whatever field they're interested in.

The most popular ones at Cornell include policy issues involving corporations and consumers, policy issues dealing with the interaction between Society and Families and Health policy issues.

Why should anyone care about Public Policy?

Like many students, I stumbled upon the major, after deciding that the major I wrote on my college application was not for me. I admit that I knew very little about what I would be studying and what its relevance would be.

Why should anyone care about Public Policy? What kept me going for two and half years?

There are very few subjects you can study that has as many real-world implications as Public Policy. It resides at the intersection between the decisions being made everything in the halls of Congress, the formal and informal dealings in businesses and boardrooms and what the media chooses to broadcast and the angles they choose to report it. At the intersection of all those interactions, that's where you and I are.

Why should anyone care about Public Policy?
Because of the issues that affect us everyday: Social Security, Welfare programs, Education vouchers, Health Insurance, immigration policies, etc

It helps us understand why the Government makes the decisions that it does, when those decisions are successful and when they're doomed to be a failure.

Public Policy empowers us to stand up for our rights and those of others.