Rutgers SOP

Statement of Purpose for a Rutgers University PhD in Public Administration Rajeet Guha As a young adult growing up in India in the post nineties liberalization era, I was witness to a rapidly growing dichotomy. I saw the emergence and development of a first world India as it were with state of the art privately provided social and economic services for those who could pay, along with a stagnant third world continuum of shoddy, often failing, publicly provided services for the poor other half of the country. I remember going to a Central Government Health Service dispensary with my father in the early nineties and being told day after day that the medicine supplies had still not arrived. Years later in 2001, as a young man, I remember going to the privately run Apollo Clinic in Delhi and being greatly impressed with the efficiency of services, albeit at a high cost. More than a decade later things don't seem to have changed much. Intuitively, I have always felt that the blame for this stark inequality must be laid at the door of public policy making and public administration. To my mind a raison d'être of public policy and administration is to enhance human well being and promote a more equal and harmonious society by helping to give all people equitable access to public goods, services and entitlements even as the market does what it does best: allocate resources for the creation of goods and services. With rapidly rising economic and social inequalities everywhere, whether in emerging economies or even in the US, public administration seems to be failing by this standard. Is my hypothesis about the true mission of Public Administration accurate? Why is it then failing? Can such a mission or standard be compatible with notions of market efficiency? Finding answers to these questions constitute my biggest motivation for pursuing a PhD program in Public Administration. A PhD program will give me the depth of knowledge, research skills and scholarship needed to probe these questions. I also believe that with deepened knowledge in this area I will be able to contribute to the welfare of those for whom the stakes in the quality and efficacy of governance systems are particularly high. The PhD program at Rutgers constitutes an excellent choice given my interests and aspirations. Its emphasis on performance as the key to effectiveness in public administration appeals to me very much. Focus on performance is at the heart of my emphasis on the benchmark standards of public administration to address social and economic inequalities. This performance orientation is also evident in the clarity with which the learning goals, success indicators and action points have been postulated. Finally the three goals of the program: research and teaching skills, original research, and career preparation seem to be very comprehensive and relevant to my dreams and aspirations. I visualize a career that can combine research and scholarship in public administration with actual public administration experience. This would mean teaching and researching public administration in a university full time combined with periodic advisory assignments or field work with governments and public agencies: facilitating a continuous two way interaction. A PhD program is the first step towards fulfilling that aspiration. In my PhD research, I would like to look at public policy making and service delivery, particularly in the area of healthcare. I want to research and understand better what prevents the bridging of inequalities of access, quality of care and outcomes for people. I will look forward to guidance from the university in order to narrow the focus further. If selected, I will bring to the program my background in public administration and economics, work experience in the area of development administration spanning both the non-government sector and the UN (internship at UNDP and volunteer work in UNICEF and UN HABITAT) and a developing country perspective. I have been mostly in charge of program administration, communication and advocacy, and research. I am now working for a non-profit specializing in the promotion of STEM education world wide as the Program Coordinator. I have always liked the independence, integrity, mission and purpose of the organizations in the not for profit sector. I am confident that Rutgers will provide the right environment, teaching and guidance to understand how public policy making and the administration of public programs and institutions can make a dent on what is perhaps the most defining challenge of our times: inequalities. It will also help me find a career, which straddles both research and practice. I would be privileged to be considered for the PhD program.

Statement of Purpose

Rajeet Guha Statement of Purpose for New York University PhD in Public Administration I have been a diligent and dedicated student throughout my academic life whether that is grade school, college or graduate school. I have also a good academic record, which is clearly underlined by the perfect score that I have secured in my masters’ degree in public administration at Pace University. My sound academic performance is grounded in the fact that I have always taken academics very seriously and my insatiable desire to excel in my studies. My inexorable hunger for knowledge and wisdom has only been satisfied by the relentless pursuit and the achievement of academic degrees burnished with good grades, accumulation of awards and the singular honor of being inducted into esteemed honor societies. When it comes to academics, I have left no stone unturned. I have always pushed the envelope in my studies and my commitment is certainly second to none. I have always taken immense pride in my academics and my stellar performance in academics vindicates that. My teachers in grade school always had a high opinion of me. They would routinely praise me in front of my parents and peers. They always regarded me to be a bright student. I was always ranked among the top tier of students in my class. I received prizes on many occasions in my school. I was also the history topper of my school. When I came to the United States for my undergraduate studies, I pursued a bachelor’s degree in economics at Clarion University. My professors at Clarion, especially my English and History professors, heaped praise on me for my masterly command over the English language and my appreciable knowledge and nuanced analysis of history. I excelled in my liberal arts education at Clarion and was an active participant in most of the courses that I took. In my economics courses, I was unofficially acclaimed as the best student by multiple professors of economics. I was the blue-eyed boy of many of my professors. My professors profusely praised my research skills even at the undergraduate level. I won a scholarship for being the best economics student from my department. I also had the distinction of being inducted into an elite international economics honor society, of which I am a member for life. Time and again, I was in the Dean’s List in the university. This is a testament to my perseverance and tenacity as despite being unwell on many occasions, I never used ill health as a crutch for ordinary performance and I always rose to the occasion whenever the need arose. Some of my best results came when I was physically unwell or in emotional turmoil as I focused exclusively at that point on academics and stoically ignored my problems. After completing my bachelor’s degree in 2006, I had a string of internships as I had contemplated working in the not-for-profit sector. In the internships, I was mostly in charge of communication, writing and research and did learn a lot. I always liked the independence, integrity, mission and purpose of the organizations that are entrenched in the not for profit sector. Idealism and public service were values that I always cherished and to my delight I found that the organizations in the not-for-profit sector had ample amounts of it. Notwithstanding these noble virtues in the not-for-profit sector, I found that the intellectually interesting research and analysis generated by them paled in comparison to that done by academia. At this point of time, I decided to pursue a masters’ degree in public administration. I was accepted in the MPA programs at both Pace University and the University of Connecticut but chose Pace, as it was closer to home. I was also the recipient of the President’s Scholarship at Pace University. Later on, at Pace, I would also be bestowed with graduate assistantships where I did research for a few of my professors. All through my MPA program, I was interning in various organizations. This was primarily due to the fact that I wanted to complement my theoretical knowledge of public administration with practical public service, which is the essence of public administration. In my MPA at Pace, I was fortunate to have studied under brilliant professors, who embraced a moral and rational outlook to resolving the problems that fall under the gamut of public administration. My writing, research, presentation and communication skills were enhanced manifold by my masters’ studies at Pace. My quantitative skills also improved with courses in statistics, economics, budgeting and accounting. My oratorical and rhetorical abilities were a revelation during the course of my graduate studies. My innately superb communication skills have reached a crescendo after completing my degree at Pace. Most importantly, in addition to secondary research where I am quite proficient, I am now familiar with and have learnt how to do primary research. My masters’ capstone dissertation entailed primary research. I did my primary research using surveys via Survey Monkey on the menace of bullying in schools that has been plaguing the US and also the ways to confront this sinister phenomenon. I specialized in healthcare administration in my MPA program. In addition to the fundamental and core courses of public administration, I fulfilled all the track and elective requirements of the healthcare field. I studied a lot of health policy including Obamacare and its ramifications. Bullying is today both a thorny problem in healthcare as it is a topical health issue and an embarrassingly recalcitrant problem for public administrators in the United States. This makes bullying fall under the twin overlapping domains of public policy and health policy. In my PhD program in public administration at NYU, I plan to pursue the fields of public policy and health policy. I also wish to expend a lot of effort in diligently studying these two related fields of public policy and health policy. I wish to dedicate a lot of time and energy in doing primary research on the issue of bullying in schools and discover innovative and pragmatic ways to resolving this stubborn and shameful problem, which is a conspicuous stain on society. I am convinced that NYU would be an ideal institution for me to pursue my doctoral research. The NYU Wagner School’s prowess in generating excellent research and incisive analysis is very well known all over the world. I wish to do my PhD at NYU as it is near to my home and also because it is one of the world’s leading academic, teaching and research universities. I believe NYU with its treasure trove of resources encompassing fantastic, cutting-edge teaching and state of the art research facilities will greatly facilitate me in realizing my dream of completing a PhD degree, where my original, primary research will be an invaluable addition to the existing body of knowledge in the realms of public policy and health policy. I intend to do lifelong research, publish papers in peer-reviewed journals and write scholarly books grounded firmly in substantial research. I aspire to come up with pioneering solutions and answers to contrarian as well as quotidian problems that afflict society. I also want to offer insightful analyses to many vexed issues and come up with a new paradigm of thought to approach conventional issues. I want to settle down in academia perpetually as a university professor, who heralds a new school of thought in public administration. I believe my focused PhD research at NYU on the scourge of bullying in schools, which is an immediate health concern and a clarion call for public administrators to act with alacrity, will greatly benefit society as a whole as I will demonstrate through my research a moral and pragmatic way to root out this menace, which threatens the moral fabric of our society and is ultimately an existential problem for humankind. My PhD research will be an asset for public administrators. I see my future attainment of a PhD degree in public administration at NYU not as the capstone attainment of my original research but simply as a stepping-stone for future research in the hallowed grounds of academia. I see it as an entrance to the world of scholarship where original research is the bedrock of the new and accepted corpus of knowledge and analysis. Research is in a nutshell my primary goal for pursuing a PhD. My second and final goal for pursuing a PhD is that I ultimately want to be a professor at a university where I can teach courses, analyze theories critically, explain theories to my students, mold their way of thinking by using a holistic analytical framework that encompasses a moral-rational philosophy, improve their communication skills and critical thinking facilities and ultimately teach them the craft of research. Finally, I can confidently say that I will be a good teacher as I have the vast knowledge, rational and moral intellect, lucid eloquence and steadfast patience necessary to be one. I love speaking, engaging in discourse with people, and ultimately teaching and imparting knowledge to people. As a potential graduate assistant in the PhD program at NYU, I believe I will be competent to fulfill my research and teaching obligations in an efficient and effective manner.