Brittany Dymond’s journey from being a business student to a Boeing engineer and now an associate legislative director at the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Washington, D.C., would be hard to explain without her degree from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington.
Yet like many successful career-switchers, her master’s degree in public administration, or MPA, played a pivotal role in the transition, not merely by the lure of its prestige to the employer but by the practical skills it equipped her with. Those skills, which were foundational to tackling her current job, were “very thorough analytical skills across a spectrum of very realistic scenarios you might encounter, such as public management issues and organizational management issues,” she says.
The MPA and its cousin, the master of public policy, or MPP — which trains policy analysts — are among the most commonly pursued professional graduate degrees offered in the U.S. by people aspiring to careers in federal or local governments, nongovernmental organizations, social enterprises and, increasingly, management consultancy and other private sector fields.
The degrees typically take two years to earn as a full-time student, although there are also accelerated programs that take about a year to complete.
What Is an MPA Degree?
The MPA generally provides “an expertise to move from an entry-level government position into more of a leadership role,” says Susannah Bruns Ali, associate professor and MPA director for the department of public policy and administration at Florida International University.
The degree “gives folks who made a commitment to public service more tools they need to move on with their career in terms of leadership, management and analysis,” says Crystal Hall, an associate professor and MPA director at UW’s Evans School.
MPA Curriculum and Career Benefits
The core curriculum of MPA programs typically includes a blend of quantitative, analytical and organizational instruction during the first year, covering subjects such as statistics, economics, budgeting, financial management, business and legal concepts, leadership and public ethics.
In the second year, students delve into a wide array of elective courses, such as environmental policies, international affairs and development, and IT management in public organizations. They also typically commence a capstone project, which involves crafting solutions to real issues.
[Read: 3 Ways Graduate School Pays Off]
A solution-oriented project or coursework could improve a student’s profile and sharpen his or her narrative as a job-seeker. For example, Dymond took a class on advocacy in her last year at Evans.
“Veteran issues were near and dear to me, and part of the class was doing ‘watching advocacy in action,'” says Dymond, a war veteran. “There were tremendous efforts behind getting legislation passed to help veterans exposed to burn pits in the Middle East. I chose to watch specific hearings on Capitol Hill about toxic exposure and communicated about it on LinkedIn.”
When she interviewed with VFW, the recruiting manager noted her commitment to veterans’ issues, she says.
What Is an MPP?
MPP programs, usually offered by the same public affairs schools, have a different emphasis. MPP is more analytic, focusing on tools, evaluation and program analysis, Hall notes.
Public policy incorporates economics, statistics, management and political science, and common MPP courses are policy theory or analysis, quantitative methods, microeconomics, education policy, public management, health policy, social policy and education policy.
Fundamentally, MPP students learn how to formulate, implement and evaluate public policies. Their first foray into a public organization might be as a policy analyst or consultant, experts say.
While analytical and organizational ingredients are both necessary for MPA and MPP programs, different schools place differing weight on them. For example, the MPA program at UW emphasizes analysis and quantitative instruction relative to MPAs at other schools, she says.
Emerging Trends in MPA and MPP Programs
As priorities in public policy evolve, MPA and MPP programs are adapting to prepare students for new challenges.
One such area is cybersecurity, which is increasingly crucial for local public bodies because they have become a prime target for ransomware attacks, experts say. Florida International, a pioneer in cybersecurity education, began incorporating relevant courses into its MPA curriculum in 2019.
“For us, it was about putting programming on the books that tackle the issue of cyber and emerging technology in the public sector context, ensuring that those pursuing a career in the public sector understand the complexity of the landscape,” says Brian Fonseca, director of the Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy at FIU. “Not the technical side of it, but the nontechnical side of it.”
[See Law vs. Public Policy: Which Degree Is Right for You?]
Addressing cybersecurity threats involves educating future public organization leaders about “what the risk management looks like, what the threat horizons are, and what some of the major bodies giving guidance are on how the public organizations should operate,” Fonseca says.
This represents a turnaround for many local governments, which historically “relegated security to an IT department so that it would be in a few people’s hands,” Ali says.
Private Sector Opportunities
MPA and MPP aspirants are increasingly considering a broader range of career options. Many pursue these degrees to transition from the private sector to the public sector, but an increasing number are choosing the opposite path.
While recognizing that the high cost of tuition can make taking lower-paying jobs more difficult — one factor behind this trend — such a career trajectory for students at Harvard University’s JFK School of Government is not new, Debra Isaacson, the school’s senior associate dean for degree programs and student affairs, wrote in an email.
“Most notably, management consulting firms have long sought HKS graduates because public problems are often solved at the intersection of the various sectors (public, private and nonprofit),” she says. Still, she notes, the upward surge in the number was skewed by the fact that the two-year MPAs include many who are pursuing concurrent degrees — usually an MPA combined with an MBA or law degree.
On the evolving private sector demand for publicly minded professionals, Isaacson adds that “management and strategy consulting firms take on government clients to assist with private education, health care companies, corporate social responsibility and DE&I positions within corporations; efforts focused on ‘tech for good.'”
Private or public sector DEI is an emerging theme across MPA education, Hall says, and diversity, equity and inclusion is a concept embedded in many courses and offered as a stand-alone class at UW.
Many MPA and MPP administrators are upbeat about the outlook for graduates in a rapidly changing world.
“Demand for our highly ranked MPA program remains strong with increased student interest in certificates of advanced study,” Colleen Heflin, associate dean, professor and chair of public administration and international affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in New York, wrote in an email. “Particularly in the areas of data analytics for public policy, security studies, and conflict and collaboration, driven in part by current global challenges.”
[Read: Is Graduate School Worth the Cost?]
Prospective students should be cautious when viewing a top program’s list of graduates’ destinations, which might include prestigious consulting firms, law firms, investment banks and other financial institutions, and technology companies.
“These graduates choose to leverage the career opportunities most readily afforded by their non-HKS degree in their first position after graduation, because the path to entry is readily available and well-supported by the ‘other’ professional school,” Isaacson says.
Who Should Consider an MPP or MPA
If you want to earn an an MPA or especially an MPP, it’s important to be prepared to study economics and statistics, regardless of your undergraduate academic background, experts say.
For example, if your undergraduate major was music, that may not matter much to MPP admissions officers if you make a strong case in the application process that you’re committed to public policy and learning analytics tools that can aid research or other work in the field.
“One of the main things we look for is commitment to public service,” Hall says. “What is your next step? What are your goals?”
A good applicant for an MPA degree sees a problem they would like to solve and believes that the solution is best delivered by, or in concert with, the public sector, says Michelle Stockman, an admissions consultant at Accepted.
“MPA applicants who really make an impression on admissions committees are those who have gotten their hands dirty, so to speak, in working with people to transform policy into meaningful change,” Stockman wrote in an email.
Creating change in larger structures, systems or deeply ingrained cultures can be extremely challenging, she says, but “the admission committee wants to see how applicants approach a problem, how they think through it, perhaps try something and change course after it doesn’t work, and what they learned in the process.”
Applicants need not have already achieved their ultimate goal, she adds. “Their job is to show the (admission committee) that they have made some kind of positive impact, but there’s still ways to go and the ad comm can help them continue on that journey.”
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How to Decide Between Public Administration and Public Policy Master’s Degrees originally appeared on usnews.com
