Master of Public Policy and Administration (MPPA)
The Master’s Degree in Public Policy and Administration program is a professional academic program intended to prepare students for careers as public managers, policy analysts, advocates, and public leaders. The program welcomes and encourages both recent college graduates and mid-career professionals with diverse backgrounds to apply. A bachelor’s degree or equivalent international degree is a prerequisite for admission.

Students are encouraged to specialize in a substantive or methodological field of interest. Those students who choose to build their own specializations are encouraged to do so by drawing upon the rich resources of the entire University, allowing for flexibility and focus in individual program design.

Accelerated Master of Public Policy (MPP)
The School of Public Policy additionally offers a 36-credit accelerated Master of Public Policy (MPP). Admission is open to current juniors at UMass and the Five Colleges. The MPP is an interdisciplinary degree that draws on such fields as political science, economics, anthropology, sociology and statistics. Students in the accelerated program will be required to take a new course, the Policy Seminar, as well as all of the required courses in the current Master of Public Policy and Administration program except for the capstone and public management courses. Students are also required to take three program electives and an additional graduate level elective or CPPA program elective that would count toward the MPP.

Further information can be obtained by calling the department’s office, tel. (413) 545-3940, or by visiting its website at www.masspolicy.org.