Graduate Program in Public Policy

The Ph.D. in Public Policy at Carolina combines core foundations in theory, empirical and normative analysis, public policy institutions and processes, and research methods with a field specialization area that is chosen and developed by the student with the approval of an individualized doctoral program committee.

The curriculum is designed to help each doctoral student to develop a core understanding of public policy as an interdisciplinary field of scholarship, and to use appropriate analytical approaches to conduct innovative policy research in public policy areas such as education, health, children and families, aging, domestic and international social policy, environment, policy institutions, and innovation and entrepreneurship.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has a distinguished tradition in public policy. A charter member of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, the Department of Public Policy currently has a twelve-member core faculty including nationally and internationally recognized expertise in policies for education, environment, health, immigrant populations, innovation and economic development, entrepreneurship, institutional design, and other policy areas. Many combine scholarship with governmental experience and direct engagement in public leadership, and many also hold joint appointments in related academic units.

In addition to the Ph.D., the department offers a graduate minor for interested students in other academic units, and close cooperation with other policy-related graduate programs at both the master's and doctoral levels offered by the departments of City and Regional Planning, Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Health Policy and Management, the Public Administration program, and the schools of Business, Education, Law, Social Work, and Medicine at the Gillings School of Global Public Health. Doctoral students in the department may also enroll in classes at Duke University (to which there is a regular bus service) as well as nearby North Carolina State University without additional cost.

Our department currently hosts twenty-five students actively pursuing a Ph.D. with a variety of policy interests. Our graduate students work closely with faculty both within our department and throughout the Triangle conducting research, participating in conferences and conducting field work around the globe.

Graduates from our program have gone on to employment at a variety of organizations. They have gone on to faculty positions at many institutions including Washington, Duke, Vanderbilt, Brown, Indiana, Arizona State, George Mason University, the Universities of Delaware, Missouri (Columbia), Georgia and the National University of Singapore. Students have also accepted positions at respected policy research organizations including the Brookings Institution, the Economic Policy Institute and the World Bank.

For more information on what is expected of graduate students at Carolina, please see the Graduate Record.