Public Policy Curriculum Design

Public policy and policy analysis education have been recognized as trainings in both academic and professional fields(Geva-May & Maslove, 2007). Although sharing many characteristics with each other, the development of public affairs programs in each country is highly influenced by different political contexts and regional cultures(Geva-May & Maslove, 2007). As increasing attention has been paid to the education in public policy, an evaluation of current public policy curriculum design is necessary to provide useful information to develop high quality education in this field. Comparative public policy has been an important focus for researchers and policy practitioners to understand policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation in different governments or academic institutions across nations. The essence of the comparative approach is context-sensitivity, that is, awareness that context matters and should be incorporated into research. Contributions of this approach are practical for meeting curricular needs, and theoretical in making research more rigorous, revealing underlying, often US-oriented assumptions and exploring alternative contexts (Minnowbrook III, 2008). The study examines public policy programs in Asia Pacific, North American and European universities (please see appendix). The public policy curricula of mater’s levels are carefully reviewed. The preliminary findings reveal that each public policy program places policy process and policy analysis as required courses. Global policy context and local policy context both gain importance on public policy curriculum design. Positivism and post-positivism are included in the list of required and elective courses, though positivism seems dominant because economic policy analysis and quantitative methodology are heavily relied on.