General Requirements

The Master’s Degree in Public Policy and Administration is awarded for completion of a two-year, 48-credit degree program and a full-time summer internship usually taken between the first and second years. The program welcomes part-time students, and offers core courses at times convenient for working students. The internship requirement is waived for part-time students with relevant experience.

Core Courses
Core couses are designed to provide students with a strong analytical foundation, applicable to a wide variety of policy and management careers. The following seven core courses are required: Politics of the Policy Process (or Comparative Public Policy), Public Management, Microeconomics for Public Policy and Administration, Research Methods for Public Policy and Administration, Introduction to Statistical Methods for Public Policy and Administration, Public Policy Analysis, and the Capstone Seminar.

Program Electives
Program electives provide students with a deeper understanding of areas that affect professionals in the public and nonprofit sectors. Students are required to take three program electives, one from each of the three sections: Policy, Management, and Methods. The following are program elective courses: Ethics and Public Policy, Comparative Public Policy, Globalization, Nonprofit Management, Information Technology, Organization Theory and Design, Applied Public Sector Economics, Advanced Qualitative Methods for Public Policy and Administration, and Advanced Quantitative Methods.

Electives and Specializations
The program encourages students to take elective courses from the wide array available at the University. In addition to the program electives, elective courses may be chosen to lead to specialization in various fields.

Elective courses may be taken from various departments of the University with the approval of the student’s adviser.

Specializations can be developed to help students build a body of knowledge in a particular area of interest, guide students as they design their program, and connect students with faculty involved in their chosen area of research and teaching. Although not a requirement of the program, some students choose to focus on a particular specialization. Students in the program have specialized in areas including Education Policy, Environmental Policy, Food Science Policy, Health Policy, International/Comparative Policy, Public and Nonprofit Management, Science and Technology Policy, and Social Policy. In addition, there are substantial resources on campus to develop specializations in information technology, conflict resolution, macroeconomic policy, advanced quantitative methods, labor policy, and media and public policy.