Master of Public Policy / Juris Doctor
The Price School of Public Policy and the Gould School of Law offer a dual degree program enabling qualified students to earn both the Juris Doctor and the Master of Public Policy degrees within four years.
The dual degree program connects analytic skills and theories of public policy with the processes of legal institutions. This combination of knowledge is well-suited for law students who want to affect the policy- making process and craft legislation, and is also valuable for prospective analysts who wish to better understand the legal practices that can advance or obstruct policy.
Students must apply to and be accepted by both schools. Students may be admitted to the dual degree at the time of their acceptance to the Gould School of Law or at the beginning of their second year.
Dual degree students spend the first year of the program taking law courses exclusively. The remaining law school units and the required 36 units of MPP courses are taken in the subsequent years.
The MPP program requires a foundational background in statistics for all students. Incoming MPP students must complete three prerequisites: a college-level statistics course and two pre-semester program labs.
Statistics Prerequisite
All entering MPP students are required to demonstrate proficiency in foundational statistical methods. The statistics prerequisite can be satisfied in one of two ways:
Statistics or Econometrics Course Taken Prior to Enrollment in the MPP
Completion of a college-level statistics or econometrics course with a grade of “B” or better within three years of matriculation. At minimum, prior coursework must have included essential topics in descriptive and inferential statistics such as measures of central tendency and precision, confidence intervals, and hypothesis testing. If relevant statistical coursework was completed more than three years prior, a waiver may be granted based on the level of statistical training completed and the degree to which currency with this material was maintained through subsequent professional use.
PPD 504 Essential Statistics for Public Management
If a student has not completed a college-level statistics course with a grade of “B” or better within three years of matriculation, they will need to complete a summer course prior to starting the MPP program. USC offers PPD 504 Essential Statistics for Public Management each summer; a grade of “C” or better in PPD 504 is sufficient to satisfy the statistics prerequisite. Students may also choose to satisfy the requirement by taking a summer course at another institution. The course must be for a grade and earn a grade of “B” or better.
Pre-semester MPP Labs
The Professional Fundamentals and Statistics/STATA Labs provide an introduction to the program, acclimate students to skills that will be further developed in their first-semester courses, and help to create a genuine The Professional Fundamentals and Statistics/STATA Labs provide an introduction to the program, acclimate students to skills that will be further developed in their first-semester courses, and help to create a genuine camaraderie within the first year student cohort. Entering MPP students are required to participate in the Statistics/STATA Lab as well as the Professional Fundamentals Lab. The labs meet the week before the start of the fall semester. The Professional Fundamentals lab will lead directly into PPD 554 Foundations for Policy Analysis, while the Statistics/STATA lab will provide initial exposure to the statistical software that will be utilized extensively in PPD 558 Multivariate Statistical Analysis.
Statistics/STATA Lab topics include:
- Brief review of inferential and descriptive statistics
- Introduction to STATA software
- Creating graphs in STATA
- Introduction to datasets in STATA
- Importing and manipulating datasets in STATA
- Data management
- Do-files
Professional Fundamentals Lab topics include:
- Research tools and fundamentals
- Essential policy communication skills
- Policy writing fundamentals
- Effective presentation and PowerPoint tools
- Developing a learning community
Public Policy Lab Series
Throughout the program, MPP and MPPDS students are invited to attend labs which are designed to introduce Throughout the program, MPP and MPPDS students are invited to attend labs which are designed to introduce various professional skills and topics considered fundamental to public policy analysis. Labs are available to attend in-person and also recorded to enable online viewing.
Prior lab series topics include:
- Introduction to Tableau
- Effective Team Management
- R for Statistical Computing
- Introduction to GIS
- Intermediate and Advanced Excel
- Using Census Data for Social Science Research
- Survey Design and Analysis I & II
- Visual Representation of Data
- Salary Negotiation
- How to Leverage Data Stories to Improve Strategic Outcomes
MPP/JD Dual Degree Requirements
The Master of Public Policy/Juris Doctor degree requires 114 units of graduate work, with 78 law school units and 36 public policy units. The public policy units include 20 units of core courses, the 4-unit Policy Analysis Practicum and 12 additional elective units divided between analytic and policy elective areas.
Public Policy Core Courses (20 units)
- PPD 503 – Economics for Public Policy
- PPD 554 – Foundations of Policy Analysis
- PPD 555 – Public Policy Formulation and Implementation
- PPD 558 – Multivariate Statistical Analysis
- PPD 560 – Methods for Policy Analysis
Policy Analysis Practicum (4 units)
- PPD 561a – Policy Analysis Practicum (1)
- PPD 561b – Policy Analysis Practicum (3)
Analytic Electives (8 units)
- PPD 542 – Policy and Program Evaluation
- PPD 587 – Risk Analysis
- PPD 647 – Finance of the Public Sector
- PPDE 636 – Urban Spatial Ethnography and Critical Cartography
- PPDE 660 – Environmental Policy and Design Analysis
- PPDE 661 – Methods for Equity Analysis
- PPDE 665 – Economic Impact Analysis: Methods and Applications
- PPDE 668 – Applied Econometrics for Program Evaluation
- PPDE 671 – Economic Analysis of Education Policy
- PPDE 672 – An Exploration of the Intelligence Community – From Policy to Cyber Espionage
- PPDE 673 Foundations of Environmental Policy
- COMM 650 – Survey Construction and Validation (Annenberg)
- SSCI 581 – Concepts for Spatial Thinking (Spatial Sciences)
Public Policy Elective (4 units)
Students choose one policy-related elective from among those courses managed by the MPP Program. The MPP program administrator can provide guidance on these courses. Note that a given course cannot count as both an Analytic Elective and a Public Policy Elective.