Arthur C. Brooks - Academia

Academia

Toward the end of his professional music career, Brooks began pursuing his higher education with a bachelor's degree in economics in 1994 from Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey, a public university that offers distance and nontraditional education programs to working adults. He received a master's degree from Florida Atlantic University in 1995 before pursuing a doctorate at the Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School, a public policy program located at the RAND Corporation, where he was also a doctoral fellow.

After receiving his PhD in policy analysis in 1998, Brooks continued to be affiliated with RAND, for which he produced a number of studies, mostly on arts funding and orchestra operations. He eventually began to study the junction of culture, politics, and economics that would come to be his trademark. "He kept his head down during the early years of his academic career, publishing the usual economics fare on philanthropy—such as how tax rates and government spending affect giving," writes Ben Gose. Brooks himself said, "I made my academic career doing that stuff, but the whole time I knew I was missing something."

After a stint at Georgia State University, Brooks landed at Syracuse University in 2001. In 2005, he became a full professor, and held the Louis A. Bantle Chair in Business and Government Policy from 2007 to 2008. At Syracuse, Brooks held joint appointments in the public affairs and management schools.