"Speaking Truth to Power"
Course Information
Graduate Courses
Graduate Electives
The following courses are open to all graduate students on the campus, including GSPP students. A few of the courses are designed primarily to provide non-GSPP students with the various skills that make up policy analysis, but most offer advanced work of relevance to GSPP students as well as to graduate students in other professional or disciplinary units.
Public Policy 251: Microeconomic Organization and Policy Analysis (3 units)
Course Format: Three hours of seminar and one hour of conference per week.
Prerequisites: Business Administration 101B or Economics 200A or equivalent and consent of instructor.
Description: Research seminar to develop public policy analyses based on microeconomic theories of organization, including collective demand mechanisms, behavioral theory of regulatory agencies and bureaucracies, and productivity in the public sector.
Public Policy 252: The Politics of Policy Advising (3 units)
Course Format: Three hours of seminar .
Description: An examination of the political environment surrounding policy advising and the application of analytical information to policy-making. By exploring the interactions of clients and advisers, engineers, planners, policy analysts, and other professionals, we will be in a better position to assess the likely effectiveness of their advising.
Public Policy C253: International Economic Development Policy (3 units)
Course Format: Three hours of lecture per week.
Prerequisites: Minimum one semester of graduate-level microeconomics and statistics or consent of instructor.
Description: This course emphasizes the development and application of policy solutions to developing-world problems related to poverty, macroeconomic policy, and environmental sustainability. Methods of statistical, economic, and policy analysis are applied to a series of case studies. The course is designed to develop practical professional skills for application in the international arena; it will equip students with the skills needed to produce an economic analysis of a policy issues in the developing world of the quality required by international agencies such as the World Bank. Also listed as Agricultural and Resource Economics C253.
Public Policy 256: Program and Policy Design (4 units)
Course Format: Three hours of seminar per week.
Description: Studio/laboratory in the design of non-physical environments. Complements courses in policy analysis, public management, economics, and political science; especially intended to integrate elements of professional programs in public policy and related areas. Students will design, in groups and individually, programs and policies that create value in the public sector, including statutes, regulations, and implementation projects. Comparative reviews will feature invited guests. Graduate level of 156.
Public Policy 257: Arts and Cultural Policy (3 units)
Course Format: Three hours of lecture per week.
Description: Survey of government policy toward the arts (especially direct subsidy, copyright and regulation, and indirect assistance) and its effects on artists, audiences, and institutions. Emphasizes "highbrow" arts, U.S. policy, and the social and economic roles of participants in the arts. Readings, field trips, and case discussion. One paper in two drafts required for undergraduate credit; graduate credit awarded for an additional short paper to be arranged and attendance at four advanced colloquia throughout the term. Graduate level of 157.
Public Policy 259: Cost-Benefit Analysis (3 units)
Course Format: Three hours of seminar per week.
Prerequisites: Calculus and Intermediate Microeconomics or consent of instructor.
Description: This course discusses and criticizes the conceptual foundations of cost-benefit analysis, and analyzes in depth some important applied aspects such as endogenous prices of other commodities, methods to infer willingness to pay, valuation of life, uncertainty and the rate of discount.
Public Policy 261: Education Policy for the Next Generation (4 units)
Course Format: Three hours of seminar per week.
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor.
Description: While education policy has been repeatedly reshaped in the past generation, certain themes persist--equalizing opportunity, providing more choice (for families and cultures), promoting excellence. This seminar explores these central themes, then analyzes current reform strategies--including vouchers, for-profit management of public schools, outcome equalization, and systemic reform of instruction--to implement them.
Public Policy 262: Drug, Tobacco, and Alcohol Policy (3 units)
Course Format: Three hours of seminar per week.
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor.
Description: Together, the use of illicit drugs, alcohol, and tobacco cost us well over $200 billion a year in losses due to medical treatment, accidents, and crime. Despite many pharmacological, behavioral, and economic parallels, policies regarding these three classes of substances have evolved independently. Critics of the current drug regime call for legalization; critics of the current tobacco regime call for prohibition. The purpose of this course will be to evaluate these debates from a policy analytic perspective, drawing on theory and research from the behavioral sciences, epidemiology, and economics. Graduate level of 162.
Public Policy 264: Striving for Excellence in Public Management (3 units)
Course Format: Three hours of seminar per week.
Description: Using case materials, students assume the roles of managers trying to improve the performance of various public agencies. Cases are drawn from a variety of policy areas, but emphasize public health, education, social services, and land use. Middle and top management roles are emphasized.
Public Policy 267: Evaluating Welfare, Health, and Education Programs (3 units)
Course Format: Three hours of seminar per week.
Prerequisites: Course in inferential statistics or consent of instructor.
Description: This course is for students who want to study the broad principles and the nitty-gritty practical problems of program evaluation. Topics will include the uses of different types of evaluations; "process" evaluations, data sources and diverse data collection methods; uses of administrative data in evaluation; sampling, sample sizes, power analysis; common statistical tests used in evaluations; assessing the strengths and weaknesses of published evaluations; methods of measuring program costs; ethical issues in evaluations.
Public Policy 269: Public Budgeting (4 units)
Course Format: Three hours of lecture/discussion per week.
Description: Public sector budgeting is an activity that incorporates many, perhaps most, of the skills of the public manager and analyst. The goal of this course is to develop and hone these skills. Using cases and readings from all levels of American government, the course will allow the student to gain an understanding of the effects and consequences of public sector budgeting, its processes and participants, and the potential impacts of various reforms. Graduate level of Public Policy 179.
Public Policy C274: Public Sector Microeconomics (3 units)
Course Format: Two hours of lecture per week.
Description: The economic and policy analysis of government expenditures, taxes, and intergovernmental fiscal relations. Also listed as Economics C230C.
Public Policy C275: Housing and the Urban Economy (3 units)
Course Format: Three hours of seminar per week.
Prerequisites: 210A-210B or equivalent.
Description: This course considers the economics of urban housing and land markets from the viewpoints of investors, developers, public and private managers, and consumers. It considers the interactions between private action and public regulation--including land use policy, taxation, and government subsidy programs. We will also analyze the links between primary and secondary mortgage markets, securitization, and liquidity. Finally, the links between local housing and related markets--such as transportation and public finance--will be explored. Also listed as City and Regional Planning C234 and Business Administration C296.
Public Policy C276: Economic Analysis and Urban Public Policy. (1-3 units)
Course Format: Three hours of seminar per week.
Prerequisites: Consent of Instructor.
Description: Three 5-week modules on urban economics topics: Poverty and Transfer Policy; Housing Markets and Urban Policy; and The Presidential Campaign and the Cities. Students may take any or all of the modules, with 1 unit or credit given for each.
Public Policy 278: Psychology and Public Policy (3 units)
Course Format: Three hours of lecture per week.
Description: This course surveys contributions to policy analysis provided by the behavioral sciences (especially social and cognitive psychology). The objectives of the course are (a) to make you an informed consumer of behavioral science research--enthusiastic yet critical, (b) to understand how and when social behavior can be predicted, understood, and/or influenced, and (c) to understand the psychological processes that influence judgment by policymakers and policy analysts.
Public Policy 279: Research Design and Data Collection for Public Policy Analysis (3 units)
Course Format: Three hours of seminar per week.
Prerequisites: At least one semester of statistics.
Description: Public policy analysis requires a sophisticated understanding of a variety of types of data. Empirical arguments and counterarguments play a central role in policy debates. Quantitative analysis courses teach you how to analyze data; this course will introduce you to strategies of data collection and principles for critically evaluating data collected by others. Topics include measurement reliability and validity, questionnaire design, sampling, experimental and quasi-experimental program evaluation designs, qualitative research methods, and the politics of data in public policy.
Public Policy 289: The Uses and Abuses of Social Science in Social Policy Making (3 units)
Course Format: Two hours of seminar per week.
Description: Examines applications of social science research in social policy making by government through case materials in the field of human resources as policy. Linkages between research and policy making and the dissemination and application of research findings will be emphasized.
Public Policy 290: Two Unit Electives (2 units)
Course Format: Two or three hours of lecture per week depending on topic. Course is seven and one half weeks at the beginning of end of the semester -- check the specific course description in the online schedule of classes or contact us to find out more.
Credit option: Course may be repeated for credit if the topic is different.
Description: Each 2-unit elective will last seven and one half weeks. Sample topics include: Ethics & Public Policy; International Economic Development; Economics in the Digital Age; Urban Policy; Macroeconomic Policy; Public Budgeting.
Public Policy 290: Special Topics in Public Policy (1-4 units)
Course Format: One to four hours of lecture per week depending on topic.
Credit option: Course may be repeated for credit if the topic is different.
Description: Course examines current problems and issues in the field of public policy. Topics vary and will be announced at the beginning of the semester. Open to students from other departments.
Sample Topics: "Cyber Life", "Higher Education in the Age of Money", "Environmental Policy", "Sorting out the Scrum of California Policymaking"
Public Policy 292: Directed Advanced Study (1-12 units)
Credit option: Course may be repeated for credit.
Description: Open to qualified graduate students wishing to pursue special study and research under direction of a member of the staff.
Public Policy 295: Supervised Research Colloquium (1-9 units)
Prerequisites: Graduate standing.
Credit option: Course may be repeated for credit.
Grading option: Must be taken on a 'satisfactory/unsatisfactory' basis.
Description: Open to qualified graduate students wishing to pursue special research under direction of a member of the staff. Discussion and analysis of dissertation research projects, including conceptual and methodological problems of designing and conducting policy research.
Public Policy 298: Directed Advanced Study (1-12 units)
Credit option: Course may be repeated for credit.
Grading option: Must be taken on a 'satisfactory/unsatisfactory' basis.
Description: Open to qualified graduate students wishing to pursue special study and research under direction of a member of the staff.
Graduate Core Courses
Public Policy 200: Introduction to Policy Analysis (4 units)
Course Format: Four hours of discussion per week. Required for first years in the spring semester.
Description: Two 2-hour lecture/discussions per week. Integrates various social science disciplines and applies these perspectives to problems of public policy. Throughout the academic term, students will apply knowledge of politics, economics, sociology, and quantitative methods in the analysis of increasingly complex problems. Students bring together the skills learned in other core courses, working in teams to solve real-life problems for off-campus clients.
Public Policy 205: Advanced Policy Analysis (6 units)
Course Format: Three hours of seminar per week. Required for second years in the spring semester.
Description: Each student will conduct thorough analysis on a major policy question. In this research, students will apply the interdisciplinary methods, approaches, and perspectives studied in the core curriculum. The seminar supports the students as they are conducting their Advanced Policy Analysis (APA) projects which serve as master’s theses and provides an opportunity for peer review and criticism of the student projects, together with continuing evaluation by the instructor. Most research is done in the field, and involves interviewing and collection of primary data prior to the actual analysis.
Public Policy 210A-210B: The Economics of Public Policy Analysis (4 units)
Course Format: Two 2-hour lecture/discussions per week plus one 1-hour discussion section per week. Required for first years.
Description: Theories of microeconomic behavior of consumers, producers, and bureaucrats are developed and applied to specific policy areas. Ability to analyze the effects of alternative policy actions in terms of (1) the efficiency of resource allocation and (2) equity is stressed. Policy areas selected to show a broad range of actual applications of theory and a variety of policy strategies.
Public Policy 220: Political and Legal Analysis (4 units)
Course Format: Four hours of lecture/discussion per week. Required for first years in the fall semester.
Description: Focuses on legal aspects of public policy by exposing students to primary legal materials, including court decisions and legislative and administrative regulations. Skills of interpretation and legal draftsmanship are developed. Relationships among law-making agencies and between law and policy are explored through case-centered studies.
Public Policy 240A-240B: Decision Analysis, Modeling, and Quantitative Methods (4 units)
Course Format: Two 2-hour lecture/discussions per week. Required for first years.
Description: Integrated course on quantitative techniques in public policy analysis: computer modeling and simulation, linear programming and optimization, decision theory, and statistical and econometric analysis of policy-relevant data. Students develop a facility for distilling the policy relevance of numbers through an analysis of case studies and statistical data sets.
Public Policy 250: Political and Agency Management Aspects of Pubic Policy (4 units)
Course Format: Two 2-hour lecture/discussions per
week.
Description: Political and organizational factors involved
in developing new policies, choosing among alternatives,
gaining acceptance, assuring implementation,
and coping with unanticipated consequences.
Includes case studies, theoretical, empirical, and
interpretative works from several disciplines.
Public Policy 260: Leadership and Social Change (4 units)
Description: This course is designed to acquaint students with the basic principles and practices of leadership – defined as the ability to focus an organization's or a public's attention on common problems and to mobilize necessary energy and resources to solve or ameliorate them. The course is also designed to help students develop their own capacities for leadership. We will be examining public agencies and not-for-profit organizations, advocacy groups, and individual “change agents,” all seeking either to improve service delivery, institute new policies, or empower those who need more voice.
Public Policy 296: Ph.D. Seminar (3 units)
Course Format: Two hours of seminar and one hour of consultation per week.
Prerequisites: Must be a Ph.D. student in public policy in third year or beyond or receive permission from the instructor to enroll.
Credit option: Course may be repeated for credit.
Description: Discussion and analysis of dissertation research projects, including conceptual and methodological problems of designing and conducting public policy research.
Public Policy 299: Independent Study in Preparation for the Master's Essay (3 units)
Prerequisites: Consent of faculty.
Credit option: Credit to be awarded on completion of the Master's essay.
Description: To be taken in conjunction with 205. Open only to qualified second-year graduate students working toward the M.P.P. degree.
Public Policy 602: Individual Study for Doctoral Students (1-10 units)
Prerequisites: Must be candidate for Ph.D.
Credit option: Course may be repeated for credit.
Grading option: Must be taken on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis.
Description: Individual study in consultation with the major field adviser, intended to provide an opportunity for qualified students to prepare themselves for the various examinations required of candidates for the Ph.D. May not be used for unit or residence requirements for the doctoral degree.>
03/18/2008