Recently the Policy Analysis Graduate Association informed me that the policy analysis program has been slated for the cutting board by Susan Welch, dean of the College of Liberal Arts. As an alumnus of this program, I am saddened and outraged at the thought of closing down a program that has served me so well.

No matter how much I try to fool myself that I secured my current position because of my wonderful intelligence and diligence, I know I owe it to the leadership and vision provided in the policy analysis program. I am the executive director of the Louisiana Health Care Commission, and there is no doubt in my mind that it is the interdisciplinary nature of the program and the reputation of Penn State that allowed me to secure my position.

However, my sorrow and anger are not purely selfish. I am concerned for those students currently in the program and for those that would have been.

It is a shame that at a time when the program was growing in size and reputation, a blunt-ax approach was taken to saving money in order to go after the easy money. One thing we learn in the program is that the easy answer is usually the wrong answer.

For those of you who do not know, the policy analysis program is an interdisciplinary program training students to enter into the government world with more rational and scientific methods, something I think we can all agree is needed in today's government of politics and irrational decision-making.

Pennsylvania, the federal government and other states desperately need policy analysis students. How can we expect our state and national governments to reflect the citizenry when a large state school like Penn State abandons its mission to provide the same access to government as does Harvard's John F. Kennedy school and Princeton's Woodrow Wilson school?

I hope that Penn State still wants to provide the same access for those of modest income as the latter schools provide to those of significant income.

Susan Welch, please do not shut the doors of government on the future students of the policy analysis program at the Pennsylvania State University.