Core Courses and Competencies

The MPP is a two-year degree program that follows the traditional academic year from late August to May.

Courses

The degree requires sixteen courses over two years in residence. The core curriculum fits into three categories: concepts, methods, and tools. Ten courses are required, including an introductory policy foundations class. A minimum of three courses is required in a concentration, allowing for three electives. A final master’s thesis with optional field research is also required.

Core Competencies

Policy research is distinct from theoretical research in its application to specific problems in government, business, or nonprofit organizational settings. The MPP core curriculum provides students with the broad range of tools that today’s policy analyst needs in order to evaluate, create, and recommend policy options to solve complex social problems.

Students will learn statistics and gain research design skills—both quantitative and qualitative—that will allow them to understand and evaluate social policies or the social interventions policies make possible. Application of these techniques will be required within concentrations and in the completion of a master’s thesis.

The contemporary policy analyst also needs a wide array of analytical frameworks for understanding and analyzing policy and the contexts that give rise to policy options. In a series of required courses and special events, students will acquire skills fundamental to assessing the policy process and policy environment. Students will acquire both a theoretical and practical understanding of how policy-related organizations operate and are constructed, but, in addition, students will learn how advocacy and communications strategies are also necessary to "frame" policies and social change to decisionmakers and the public. Students will be expected to demonstrate and apply this learning within various concentrations and to demonstrate through a written thesis an understanding of how these processes interact.