Today, Harvard Kennedy School reaches roughly 1,000 students per year in our degree programs and 5,000 through executive education. The total population of people in the world who are motivated by the public good, capable of public leadership at the highest level, and could benefit from what we offer is vastly greater than that. The barriers that keep most of them from getting here—cost, geography, professional obligations, caregiving responsibilities, visa status—are not a reliable proxy for talent, but for access. The gap between who we reach and who we could reach is therefore a significant constraint on our ability to deliver on our mission.

Those factors, however, shape who HKS trains and, as a result, who ends up in positions of public leadership. If the people we train all come from the same narrow slice of society, the same geographies, backgrounds, and institutions, then they will have a limited and distorted understanding of what governance actually needs to do and for whom. Their blind spots will show up in their work. 

Over the decades, we have broadened who comes to HKS by expanding financial aid, building executive education programs that reach working professionals, and recruiting students from more countries and backgrounds. We are proud that our students and alumni come from all 50 states, more than a hundred countries, and all walks of life. That work has made a difference while also revealing that truly broadening our aperture will require even more effort. 

We are building this pipeline for the person who... has always assumed that a place like Harvard is not for them. It should be.

The first constraint is financial. Without financial aid, a public policy education costs more than most people can afford, and unlike business school, the careers it prepares people for rarely pay enough to fully account for student loans. Medical schools are going tuition-free because debt was driving talented people away from the profession. Concerns about debt are holding back would-be public servants, too. The result is a structural contradiction at the heart of our mission: the degree that is supposed to prepare people for public service may make public service financially untenable for those who pursue it. We need to be able to recruit the most talented people regardless of their means, and we need to make it possible for them to actually serve once they graduate.

The second constraint is reach. Even for those who can afford it, an HKS education has required coming to Cambridge. This might mean uprooting a life, obtaining a visa, stepping away from a job, leaving a family, or relinquishing caregiving responsibilities. For many promising public leaders, those requirements are disqualifying.

These barriers have nothing to do with the quality of what a person could contribute or become. A working parent leading a community organization in rural Kentucky, a civil servant in Nairobi, a statewide official in California—these are exactly the people we should be reaching and, in many cases, are not. We must fully embrace different learning models that would make it possible. 

We aim to build a pipeline that meets our mission. Our aspirations are straightforward. When it comes to financial accessibility, no one who is committed to public service and qualified to be at the Kennedy School should be unable to enroll or unable to serve once they graduate because of cost. When it comes to reach, our aspiration is to make geography and life circumstances irrelevant to whether someone can access what we offer. We can do this by exploring new online and part-time degree options, through executive education that travels, and through a digital curriculum that can reach people with extraordinary potential as public leaders who will never come to Cambridge. 

We are building this pipeline for the person who is dedicated to serving the public interest, has the ability to do so at the highest level, and has always assumed that a place like Harvard is not for them. It should be. 
 

Initial priorities

  • Substantially increase resources for financial aid, by adding a range of new merit- and need-based scholarship models so that talented students who wish to pursue careers in public service can graduate without significant debt.
  • Explore new models for learning that don’t require coming to Cambridge, by expanding our executive education programming and considering new part-time, non-residential certificate and degree program models. 
  • Reach hundreds of thousands of public servants around the world by offering expanded online courses and digital teaching materials.

Delivering on our Future

The forces reshaping the world are accelerating at a pace unknown to recent generations. We are setting ambitious goals — grounded in four imperatives — to respond to a changing world.

Leadership for a New Era

A vision for how HKS will lead in this moment — and make the world more safe, free, and sustainably prosperous for all.

Download the Full Vision