The Fifth Column: On Using Operations Research to Fund Operations Research (Economically)

The Preparation for Battle Many, many years ago in a nameless western state there existed a small but feisty operations research program (OR) of the hands-on variety. This program was renowned for requiring students to do real projects in which real costs were reduced and real profits were made. It was not long before this program attracted the attention of one of the educational arms of one of our armed services. A group of officers duly visited the site, looked upon what was going on, and found it good. They then told the director of this program that they could virtually guarantee to send a goodly number of officers to be trained and educated in the mysteries of applied OR every year. Everything went swimmingly until one of the officers mentioned that it was customary that state schools (which this school happened to be) would charge only the in-state tuition for these defenders of our country. This was because they were sent there on permanent-changeof-station orders and therefore were ordered to report there for education. The school administration had no problem with this “military discount;” however, it would require approval at the state level. This meant that a bill would have to be introduced into the legislature specifically exempting these military students from paying the full (large) out-of-state tuition. An understanding member of the legislature was found to introduce the required bill, and in the fullness of time, the bill was scheduled to appear before the feared Joint Budget Committee (JBC).