Master in Public Administration in International Development

Training for development practitioners

The MPA/ID Program is a rigorous, economics-centered program designed to train the next generation of practitioners and leaders in the field of global development.

Within a multidisciplinary core curriculum, you will take advanced economics and quantitative methods sequences with an emphasis on key policy applications to development. You will also complete core courses in economic development, politics, political philosophy, and management—integrated with the theory and practice of development.

In your second year, you’ll choose from elective options at HKS, at the other graduate schools at Harvard—such as Business, Design, Education, Law, and Public Health as well as the Faculty of Arts and Sciences—and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Core Curriculum

• Advanced Microeconomic Analysis I: Supply, Demand, and Equilibrium (API-109)
• Advanced Microeconomic Analysis II: Game Theory and Information Economics (API-110)
• Advanced Macroeconomics for the Open Economy I (API-119)
• Advanced Macroeconomics for the Open Economy II (API-120)
• Advanced Quantitative Methods I: Description and Prediction (API-209)
• Advanced Quantitative Methods II: Causal Inference (API-210)
• Economic Development: Theory and Evidence (DEV-101)
• Economic Development: Using Analytic Frameworks for Smart Policy Design ( DEV-102)
• Applications and Cases in International Development (DEV-401)
• The Politics of Development: Power, Institutions, and Prosperity (DPI-410)
• Political Philosophy for Development (DPI-411)
• Getting Things Done: Management and Implementation for Development (MLD-102)
• Second Year Policy Analysis Seminar (DEV-250)

You will gain professional expertise through the case workshop and speaker series, a required summer internship, and an integrative capstone paper.

Second Year Policy Analysis: Using Your Toolkit

The Second Year Policy Analysis (SYPA) serves as the capstone experience for the MPA/ID Program. You will choose a current development issue of interest to you; select your faculty advisor; and draw on the tools of economics, management, and political analysis to define the problem, analyze the evidence, develop alternatives, and provide specific policy recommendations for a concrete development problem.

Summer Internships: Out of the classroom, into the field

During the summer between your first and second year, you will engage in a development project, typically in a low- to middle-income country other than your own. This field experience allows you to apply the skills you’ve acquired during your first year and explore a new organization, substantive area of interest, or part of the world.

STEM Eligibility

The MPA/ID Program is a designated STEM-eligible program (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). Students with F-1 visas may apply to work in the United States for two additional years beyond the standard 12-month Optional Practical Training (OPT) following graduation.

The MPA/ID Program consists of four semesters of full-time coursework in residence at HKS. The coursework includes the core curriculum, a minimum of six electives (24 credits), a development-related internship, and the Second-Year Policy Analysis.

To graduate, you must:

• Matriculate as a full-time, in-residence student and take 12-24 credits per semester
• Earn at least 76 credits, which must include the required courses, SYPA, and electives
• Finish with a GPA of B or better
• Earn a B- or higher in all required MPA/ID courses

You might consider pursuing a second degree jointly or concurrently if you’re interested in how the world’s challenges can be addressed at the intersection of international development and business, law, medicine, design, or other fields.

Pursuing a joint or concurrent degree reduces coursework and residency requirements and makes it possible to earn two degrees in a shorter amount of time.

Joint Degrees

As an MPA/ID student, you can pursue a joint degree—either an MBA at Harvard Business School or a JD at Harvard Law School—that involves carefully crafted and integrated coursework.

Concurrent Degrees

You can pursue a concurrent degree in business, law, medicine, design, or another field—as long as it is:

• A professional degree (for example, an MBA, MD, or JD; not a PhD or an academic master’s degree)
• At least a two-year program
• Completed at a partner school

The concurrent degree program allows you to pursue degrees at HKS and at a partner school; however, the coursework is not as closely integrated as the joint degree program. As a concurrent degree student, you are responsible for weaving together the two halves of your learning experience.

Where ideas meet practice

Our faculty members are changing the ways in which poverty and underdevelopment are analyzed and approached.

MPA/ID faculty members are scholars and practitioners working with governments, international organizations, and NGOs. They are diagnosing economic woes and helping develop cures, bringing real-world development and political experience to bear on complex challenges, and helping people escape poverty by understanding what hinders development progress.

Our alumni do development differently

Around the world, MPA/ID graduates are in pivotal roles, leading development.

Inside governments and traditional development organizations, and outside the box in startups and social enterprises, MPA/IDs are changing the way development is done.

Our graduates hold influential policy and management positions in a wide range of international organizations, national governments, central and regional banks, nonprofit and research organizations, and private sector companies.

Where do MPA/ID graduates work?

Learn more about how MPA/ID alumni are shaping development.