OAJ Hot Take: It’s Time to Rethink MPP Concentrations
The piece below is part of our weekly blog post series written by the Open-Air Journal team where we explore issues at Heller, current events, or whatever is presently on our minds.
It is no secret that the Heller School of Social Policy and Management currently stands at a crossroads. At a time of underfunding, understaffing, and under enrollment, important decisions for how we move forward must be made. While program leaders are doing their best with what they have, they still need to be realistic about the situation at hand. Courses and concentrations are being canceled, and the students who are currently enrolled, who are often paying tens of thousands of dollars to be here, are being shortchanged. I believe it is time to consider reorganizing the Master of Public Policy (MPP) concentrations and replacing them with something more sustainable.
In the MPP program, there are currently seven concentrations of study: Economic and Racial Equity (ERE), Children, Youth and Families (CYF), Environmental Justice (EJ), Health Policy, Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGS), Behavioral Health, and General Social Policy. While these are the options on paper, the reality is a different story. Heller recently announced that the EJ concentration would be eliminated because they could not hire faculty and offer courses due to low enrollment. The Health Policy concentration frequently faces course cancellations due to a low number of concentrators and has recently fallen from the top ten health policy and management programs in the country. However, it's important to note that this ranking assesses more programs than just the MPP, including the MS in Global Health Policy and Management. Concentration enrollments fluctuate year to year, but that is not an excuse for the school failing to uphold its promises to the students who do attend. Many students chose Heller based on these concentrations, and Heller is failing them. Realistically, Heller has no control over who applies and what they want to study, but they can choose to stop advertising programs that they cannot fund regardless of enrollment. If the school cannot promise that, then they should stop promising subject matter concentrations at all.
Removing these concentrations would essentially enroll all MPP students in what is currently called the “General Social Policy” concentration. Without the restrictions of required concentration courses, students could be more intellectually curious and study any topic that interests them, rather than being restricted to their learning plan. This would also help with enrollment for some of the classes that are currently most likely to be canceled since students outside of the smaller concentrations would have a chance to enroll. Without needing to take so many specific classes, students could personalize their studies and widen their scope of knowledge.
Rather than focusing so heavily on topic-based concentrations, which it cannot reliably offer, the public policy program should re-format concentrations to be based on career path. At first-year orientation, students receive a quick lesson on the types of jobs graduates often do with an MPP degree. They broke those jobs down into three categories: policy researcher, policy maker, and policy analyst. Essentially, policy researchers focus mostly on data and numbers, policymakers focus more on navigating politics, and policy analysts do both and bridge the gap. The MPP program as it stands is designed for that in-between area – the policy analyst. However, it seems that the technical elective courses offered favor policy research and do not provide balance for people interested in policymaking. Heller should offer two MPP concentrations to represent these areas: Policy Research and Policy Making, so students can hone in on other skills in addition to the general policy analyst classes we are already taking. Following the completion of their career-focused concentration classes and general requirements, students could take whatever topic-based electives they want. The career-focused concentration classes would equate to the number of required courses for the topic concentrations we currently have (two to three classes), and the rest would be electives.
This proposal would keep courses that are necessary for the degree to count as a certified MPP program and provide students with a well-rounded policy education. However, it would turn a few of the currently required courses into electives. Policymaking concentration courses could include the political advocacy course that Heller already has, in addition to new courses on lobbying, campaign finance, and other related skills. Policy Research concentration courses could include the national datasets class, participatory action research, research methods, and other research-based courses. All students would still take economic theory, policy analysis, regression analysis, and other core courses. Existing faculty or faculty from other programs/departments at Brandeis could teach the new courses focusing on policymaking.
Harvard University, which is currently ranked third in the U.S. for Social Policy, offers courses related to policymaking, as opposed to simply research-oriented skills courses. First-year students take courses on policy design and negotiation, which would both be highly beneficial for students who wish to pursue the political side of policy. The University of Michigan, which is ranked first in the U.S. for Social Policy, also requires courses on management and negotiations. Teaching these skills enhances their academic outcomes, which is something Heller should follow as they consider the future of the program.
The MPP program is currently set up to fail students by advertising concentrations that it cannot reliably offer. Restructuring into a career-centric concentration structure would ensure that there is enough enrollment to offer all concentration courses since there would be two concentrations instead of seven. Currently, course enrollments are diluted by spreading students across so many concentrations. By narrowing these down, more students per cohort would be enrolled in each of the concentrations, and classes would be more likely to be able to run. Furthermore, this would foster a more intersectional learning environment since students would be looking at policy topics from multiple perspectives (race, economics, gender, family, climate, health, etc.). We know that no policy exists in just one of these boxes, so let’s not put students in one.
We all can see that the Heller School is facing an upward battle, but we can also see that the Heller School is equipped to fight, as demonstrated by this year’s Social Policy Program ranking. As we are restructuring, we need to consider what needs are not currently being met. Let’s use this time of uncertainty to change for the better and offer students a more personalized curriculum to best prepare them for their futures.
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