Job Market
The Department of Homeland Security has announced a grant program for students who want to develop skills that will prepare them for analyst jobs in that agency. There is currently a lack of such programs.
In a recent in-depth article on homeland security and training specialists for the intelligence community ("Colleges' Hottest New Major: Terror," Washington Post, April 3, A01), Steven David, Director of a Homeland Security Certificate Program at Johns Hopkins, notes,
"Homeland Security is probably going to be the government's biggest employer in the next decade."
In the same article, Stanley Supinski, Chairman of the Homeland Security/Defense Education Consortium, composed of the Department of Defense, several universities and the Naval Postgraduate School stated, "It's growing by leaps and bounds."
Critical Need. The employment opportunities noted are driven by government's assessment of intelligence as a national "critical need" and by government funding. There are several Federal scholarship programs available to fund graduate students who desire to study and work in the intelligence area. Two of these programs are the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program (PRISP Program), which provides scholarships up to $25,000/year and the Intelligence Community Scholarship Program which awards scholarships to students to prepare them for civilian careers in the intelligence community.
Outcomes:
The Intelligence Analysis courses have been designed to meet the knowledge, skills, and abilities (K.S.A.'s) that have been promulgated by the Department of Homeland Security for those involved in intelligence analysis.
These KSA's are also appropriate for police agency ("crime analyst") positions and for analyst positions in private security.
Besides maintaining satisfactory progress in various Intelligence Analysis courses, the student's capstone project (thesis) is the key element in his or her portfolio that demonstrates satisfactory acquisition of the relevant K.S.A.'s.
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