As the school year winds down and the first-year students at the LBJ School are completing our Policy Research Projects, it is worth taking a moment to think about how this major part of our curriculum could be improved. I have heard many of my fellow first-year students have been disappointed with their PRPs for a variety of reasons, some legitimate, some not. While many other students have had extremely positive experiences, it is disconcerting that there are so many students who have been disappointed in what amounts to one-eighth of the curriculum at the school.

Like most public affairs schools, the LBJ School determined that it is important for students to have an applied learning experience. The school’s website says, “the policy research project enables students to develop and integrate their analytical and quantitative research skills,” yet the at the LBJ School, this project takes place in the students’ first year. Most of the other public affairs schools, including the Maxwell School, the Kennedy School, Indiana University’s School of Public Affairs and Environmental Affairs, and the Woodrow Wilson School, which were ranked 1 through 4 in the latest US News and World Report rankings, have these applied projects after students have completed their first year. While most schools refer to their applied learning projects as “unique,” the LBJ School’s inclusion of these projects in the students’ first year is truly unique. 

On Nov 9, 1966, President Johnson made a speech to HUD Employees on the department’s 1st Anniversary.

“The only legitimate function of government is to help people. Your job is not just to run an efficient office. Your real job is to enrich the lives of the Americans who live in our over-crowded cities.

I hope that you will always ask yourself these questions:

Is it right for an infant to come into the world in a rat-infested slum? Is it right to condemn a child to joyless streets, where the sight of grass and trees and the smell of good, clean air are luxuries beyond his dreams? Is it right for a mother to lack the plumbing to wash her family’s clothes? Or a father to lack the skill to earn a decent living?

In a 1990 paper, John Williamson termed what could be considered the most controversial concept in development economics during the last 20 years: The Washington Consensus.

Attacked by many, defended by some, The Washington Consensus agenda promptly became the basis for any policy discussion in the main economies in the Latin America region in a context characterized by the disruption of capital flows during the Debt Crisis, a period of serious hyperinflation and anemic productivity growth. Most of its success came from the fact that it did in a very efficient way “set out what would be regarded in Washington as constituting a desirable set of economic policy reforms” (Williamson 1990).