RAND Corporation facts for kids
 
Headquarters in Santa Monica
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| Predecessor | Spin-off of Project RAND, a former partnership between Douglas Aircraft Company and the United States Air Force until incorporation as a nonprofit and gaining independence from both. |
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| Formation | May 14, 1948 |
| Founders |
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| Type | Global policy think tank, research institute, and public sector consulting firm |
| Legal status | Nonprofit corporation |
| Purpose |
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| Headquarters | Santa Monica, California, U.S. |
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Region
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Worldwide |
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President and CEO
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Jason Gaverick Matheny |
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RAND Leadership
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President, RAND Europe
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Hans Pung |
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| Subsidiaries | RAND Europe Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School |
| Affiliations | Independent |
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Revenue
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 $390 million (2023) |
| Disbursements | Numerous |
| Expenses | $427 million (2023) |
| Endowment | $288.7 million (2023) |
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Staff
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1,900 (2023) |
The RAND Corporation is an American group that does not aim to make a profit. It is a global think tank, a place where experts study big problems. RAND also works as a research institute and a firm that advises the government and other public groups.
RAND focuses on research and development (R&D) in many different areas. Since the 1950s, RAND's studies have helped the United States government make important choices. These choices included decisions about the space race, the Vietnam War, and nuclear weapons. They also helped with social programs and national health care.
The RAND Corporation started as "Project RAND" right after World War II. The name "RAND" comes from "research and development." The United States Army Air Forces created Project RAND to plan for future weapons. The Douglas Aircraft Company was hired to study warfare between continents. Later, Project RAND became the RAND Corporation. It then started researching everyday topics like education and international relations. It was one of the first groups to be called a "think tank."
RAND gets its money from both public and private sources. These include the U.S. government, private gifts, companies, and universities. It also receives funds from charities, U.S. state and local governments, and international groups. A small amount of funding comes from foreign governments.
Contents
What RAND Does and Where It Is
RAND has about 1,850 employees. Its main office is in Santa Monica, California. Other U.S. locations include Arlington, Virginia; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Boston, Massachusetts. There is also an office in New Orleans, Louisiana.
RAND Europe has offices in Cambridge, United Kingdom; Brussels, Belgium; and Rotterdam, Netherlands. RAND Australia is located in Canberra, Australia.
RAND is home to the Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School. This is a special school that offers a PhD degree in public policy. Students at this school work with RAND experts on real-world problems. This helps them get practical experience. The school is located at RAND's Santa Monica research center. It is the largest program of its kind in the world.
All students at the Pardee RAND Graduate School receive money to cover their education costs. This allows them to focus on research projects. They also get on-the-job training. RAND also offers internships and other programs. These allow students to help with RAND's research projects. Most of these are short projects guided by a RAND staff member.
RAND publishes the RAND Journal of Economics. This is a respected journal where economists share their research. Many Nobel Prize winners have worked with RAND at some point in their careers.
How RAND Started
Project RAND's Beginning
RAND was created because people in the War Department and other groups saw a need. They wanted a private organization to connect research with decisions about new inventions. The idea for RAND came from a talk in September 1945. General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold and Douglas executive Franklin R. Collbohm were worried. They feared the U.S. government would lose its connection to smart scientists after World War II.
General Arnold agreed with Collbohm's ideas. Collbohm then brought in more people from Douglas Aircraft. Two days later, they met with Arnold to plan the project.
Douglas engineer Arthur Emmons Raymond came up with the name Project RAND. Collbohm suggested he lead the project temporarily. He later became RAND's first president and stayed until 1967.
Project RAND officially started on October 1, 1945. It began working in December 1945 under a contract with Douglas Aircraft Company. In May 1946, they released a report about designing a spaceship that could orbit the Earth.
Becoming the RAND Corporation
By late 1947, Douglas Aircraft worried that their close link with RAND might cause problems. This was especially true for future contracts. So, in February 1948, the U.S. Air Force decided that Project RAND should become its own group. It would be a nonprofit corporation, separate from Douglas.
On May 14, 1948, RAND became a nonprofit corporation in California. On November 1, 1948, the Project RAND contract moved from Douglas Aircraft to the RAND Corporation. The Ford Foundation provided the first money for this new, independent group.
Since the 1950s, RAND's research has helped shape U.S. government decisions. These include the space race and the Vietnam War. They also studied the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. RAND helped create social welfare programs like the Great Society. They also contributed to the digital revolution and national health care plans.
RAND also helped develop the idea of nuclear deterrence. This is the idea that countries won't attack each other with nuclear weapons because it would lead to both sides being destroyed. This idea was based on their work with game theory.
Even in the late 1940s, RAND was secretly suggesting a big effort to design a human-made satellite. This satellite would take pictures from space. They also recommended building the rockets needed to launch it.
RAND was not the very first think tank. But in the 1960s, it was the first group to be regularly called a "think tank." Because of this, RAND became the model for what a modern think tank is today.
Major Achievements
RAND's achievements come from its work in systems analysis. This is a way of studying complex problems. RAND made important contributions to space systems and the U.S. space program. They also helped with computing and artificial intelligence. RAND researchers developed many ideas used to build the Internet. RAND also helped create and use wargaming, which is like playing out different scenarios to plan for real-world events.
Today, RAND's experts study many topics. These include:
- Child policy
- Law and justice
- Education
- Health and health care
- International relations
- Job markets
- National security and defense
- Infrastructure and energy
- The environment
- Business and economics
- Long-term planning
- Handling crises and disasters
- Population studies
- Science and technology
- Social policy and welfare
- Terrorism and counterterrorism
- Cultural policy and arts policy
- Transportation
Between 1974 and 1982, RAND ran a very important study on health insurance. It was called the RAND Health Insurance Experiment. This study compared how much people used health services based on how much they had to pay.
In 2018, RAND started a project called "Gun Policy in America." This project reviews evidence about the effects of gun policies in the United States. In 2020, they expanded this review. They looked at nearly 13,000 studies on guns and gun violence. They chose 123 studies that were very strong in their methods. These studies helped them understand the scientific support for different gun policies.
Notable People at RAND
Many important people have been part of RAND's history. Here are a few:
- Henry H. "Hap" Arnold: A top general in the U.S. Air Force.
- Kenneth Arrow: An economist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics.
- Paul Baran: One of the people who helped create packet switching, a key technology for the Internet.
- Richard Bellman: A mathematician known for his work on dynamic programming.
- Bernard Brodie: A military strategist who helped shape nuclear ideas.
- Samuel Cohen: The inventor of the neutron bomb.
- Franklin R. Collbohm: An aviation engineer and a founder of RAND.
- George Dantzig: A mathematician who created the simplex algorithm for solving complex problems.
- Daniel Ellsberg: An economist famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers.
- Francis Fukuyama: A well-known academic and author.
- Herman Kahn: A theorist on nuclear war and a founder of scenario planning.
- Henry Kissinger: A former United States Secretary of State and Nobel Peace Prize winner.
- Harry Markowitz: An economist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on financial investments.
- Jason Gaverick Matheny: The current President and CEO of The RAND Corporation.
- Margaret Mead: A famous U.S. anthropologist.
- John Forbes Nash, Jr.: A mathematician and game theorist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics.
- John von Neumann: A mathematician and a pioneer of the modern digital computer.
- Condoleezza Rice: A former intern and trustee at RAND, and a former U.S. Secretary of State.
- Donald Rumsfeld: A former Chairman of RAND's board and a former U.S. Secretary of Defense.
- Paul Samuelson: An economist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics.
- Thomas C. Schelling: An economist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics.
- Herbert Simon: A political scientist and psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics.
- Oliver Williamson: An economist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics.
See also
In Spanish: RAND para niños
- A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates (published by RAND)
- Truth Decay (also published by RAND)
