Courses

Rooted in Hannah Arendt’s 1946 concept of “The Right to Have Rights,” this course will focus on the ways in which the 21st century emergence of states and nationalities globally created both structured approaches to citizenship, along with a wide range of permissions and restrictions governing it.

Only open to students in the Executive MPA Program. 

The course will focus on current issues in education and social policy, beginning with an analysis  of the case for public intervention in the market for education.  We will then turn to considering key policy debates and options for addressing important problems - including both policies aimed at the education sector (i.e., public schools) and those affecting other sectors (i.e., housing policy). Particular attention will be paid to reviewing and weighing the evidence base for policy making and considering alternative solutions.

R is a powerful open source language and environment for statistical computing and graphics. R provides a wide selection of statistical and graphical techniques. It is rapidly becoming the leading language in data science and statistics. R can easily tackle linear and nonlinear modelling, statistical tests, time series analysis, classification, clustering and more.

Capital is but a tool – one that can be used for many different purposes. This course critically examines the role of capital and its appurtenant power as drivers of societal outcomes, providing a framework to interrogate finance as both a locus of and an instrumentality for social change.

Effective development, planning execution and communication of special projects are critical to all types of public service organizations. Service organization, health providers, nonprofits and government organizations constantly pursue new initiatives and projects to address the demands of their constantly changing environment. This course offers an introduction to the basic concepts and methods for directing projects and provides students with tools that prepare them for success as a project manager. 

Only students in the Executive MPA program.

Restricted to students in the Executive MPA Program.

Public service work involves some amount of writing and communications. But the tools for success have dramatically changed in the last few years with the development and deployment of Large Language Models and Artificial Intelligence. This communications course will equip students with the skills to leverage AI tools, such as GPT, GrammarlyGo, and other AI products, to produce compelling and persuasive communication  deliverables.

This course examines how government agencies implement plans, policies, and projects under real-world constraints. Government agencies are some of the largest and most consequential organizations shaping contemporary life, especially for the poor. Their importance is even more evident now, as governments around the world continue to mishandle the pandemic, slide towards authoritarianism, and abuse the rights of vulnerable people. Surprisingly, their outsized influence is rarely matched by an adequate amount of attention.

The public/nonprofit administrator, whether primarily concerned with management, policy or finance, is called upon to manage or becomes involved in a wide variety of conflicts. Conflict is ubiquitous - within and between organizations and agencies, between levels of government, between interest groups and government, between interest groups, between citizens and agencies, etc.

Open only to students in the MSPP program. The goal of this course is to provide students with an introduction to key methods of quantitative policy analysis. We develop the statistical toolkit of regression analysis, reviewing the bivariate regression model and then continuing with multiple regression, and explore how these methods are applied to policy analysis in five benchmark techniques: randomized trials, direct regression analysis, instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, and difference in differences.

Multiple regression is the core statistical technique used by policy and finance analysts in their work. In this course, you will learn how to use and interpret this critical statistical technique. Specifically you will learn how to evaluate whether regression coefficients are biased, whether standard errors (and thus t statistics) are valid, and whether regressions used in policy and finance studies support causal arguments.

This course introduces students to basic statistical methods and their application to management, policy, and financial decision-making. The course covers the essential elements of descriptive statistics, univariate and bivariate statistical inference, and introduces multivariate analysis. In addition to covering statistical theory the course emphasizes applied statistics and data analysis, using the software package, Stata.

Only open to students in the Executive MPA Program.

This course introduces students to the main areas of corporate finance, how they relate to the management of public service organizations, and how public policies influence financial decision making for firms. The course covers topics in the three main areas of corporate finance: 1) capital structure (financing choices), 2) valuation (project and firm valuation) and 3) corporate governance (optimal governance structures).

The past decade has seen the increasing availability of very large scale data sets, arising from the rapid growth of transformative technologies such as the Internet and cellular telephones, along with the development of new and powerful computational methods to analyze such datasets. Such methods, developed in the closely related fields of machine learning, data mining, and artificial intelligence, provide a powerful set of tools for intelligent problem-solving and data-driven policy analysis.

Understanding geographic relationships between people, land use, and resources is fundamental to planning. Urban planners routinely use spatial analysis to inform decision-making. This course will introduce students to Geographic Information Systems (GIS), a tool to analyze and visualize spatial data. The course will emphasize the core functions of GIS: map making, data management, and spatial analysis. Students will learn cartographic best practices, how to find and create spatial data, spatial analysis methodology, and how to approach problem solving from a geographic perspective.

Alternate title: "How to Use a Bit of Code to Do Things That Would Be Really Hard in Spreadsheets." Students will learn data analysis through the Python programming language — exploring, manipulating, visualizing, and interpreting open data to answer policy questions. The class incorporates use of generative AI for coding problems, helping students understand its strengths and weaknesses. No coding experience required.

The course will introduce students to the planning process by reviewing commonly used planning practices and tools. As an intermediate level course, broad overviews of each topic will be provided. The intention is to expose students to the many considerations that go into planning, while introducing them to skills that can be incorporated into their “planner toolkit” which can be further expanded upon through future coursework and work experience. Students will be expected to apply skills and concepts learned in class to a simulated planning project based on a real site in New York City.

This class is about the infrastructure systems that make up the built environment of cities, and that can make cities more or less sustainable and equitable. As humans face concurrent crises of climate change and inequality, most of the earth’s population lives in cities and relies on environmental infrastructure for basic needs like water, sanitation, housing, and mobility. What makes a system sustainable and resilient to climate change?

Introduction to Public Policy covers a wide range of topics, from the norms and values informing democratic policymaking to the basics of cost-benefit and other tools of policy analysis. Though emphases will differ based on instructor strengths, all sections will address the institutional arrangements for making public policy decisions, the role of various actors-including nonprofit and private-sector professionals-in shaping policy outcomes, and the fundamentals (and limits) of analytic approaches to public policy.

Policymaking in the United States often raises important legal issues. This course is primarily designed to help public service students understand the kinds of legal issues that can be raised in the context of policymaking as well as the key elements of the U.S. legal system through which these issues are often litigated.

This course is about the process of scoping and planning public sector investment projects and the basic knowledge and skills required for their financial and economic appraisal (‘ex-ante’ evaluation).

The focus is on urban infrastructure projects identified, prioritized, and appraised through local/municipal planning processes. Case studies include water supply and sewerage, urban transport, solid waste management and green infrastructure.