Harvard Kennedy School
Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), officially the John F. Kennedy School of Government, is the school of public policy and government of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school offers master's degrees in public policy, public administration, and international development, four doctoral degrees, and various executive education programs. It conducts research in subjects relating to politics, government, international affairs, and economics. As of 2021, HKS had an endowment of $1.7 billion.[3] It is a member of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA), a global consortium of schools that trains leaders in international affairs.[4]
The primary campus of Harvard Kennedy School is on John F. Kennedy Street in Cambridge. The main buildings overlook the Charles River and are southwest of Harvard Yard and Harvard Square, on the site of a former MBTA Red Line trainyard. The School is adjacent to the public riverfront John F. Kennedy Memorial Park.
Harvard Kennedy School alumni include 20 heads of state or government from around the world, the most of any graduate institution in the world. Alumni also include cabinet officials, military leaders, heads of central banks, and legislators.
Academics[edit]
Degrees[edit]
Harvard Kennedy School offers four master's degree programs.[18] The two-year Master in Public Policy (MPP) program focuses on policy analysis, economics, management, ethics, statistics and negotiations in the public sector.[19] There are three separate Master in Public Administration (MPA) programs: a one-year Mid-Career Program (MC/MPA) intended for professionals who are more than seven years removed from their college graduation; a two-year MPA program intended for professionals who have an additional graduate degree and are more recently out of school; and a two-year international development track (MPA/ID) focused on development studies with a strong emphasis on economics and quantitative analysis.
Members of the mid-career MPA class are Mason Fellows, who are public and private executives from developing countries. Mason Fellows typically constitute about 50 percent of the incoming class of Mid-Career MPA candidates. The Mason cohort is the most diverse at Harvard in terms of nationalities and ethnicities represented. It is named after Edward Sagendorph Mason, the former Harvard professor who, from 1947 to 1958, was dean of Harvard's Graduate School of Public Administration, now known as Harvard Kennedy School.
In addition to the master's programs, Harvard Kennedy School administers three doctoral programs.[20] Ph.D. degrees are awarded in public policy, in social policy in conjunction with Harvard's departments of government and sociology, and in health policy in conjunction with FAS and the Harvard School of Public Health.
Rankings[edit]
Harvard Kennedy School has routinely ranked as the best, or among the best, of the world's public policy graduate schools. U.S. News & World Report ranks it the best graduate school for social policy, the best for health policy, and second best for public policy analysis.[27] In 2015 rankings, Kennedy School is ranked first in the subcategory of health policy and second in the category of public policy analysis and social policy.[28][29]
Kennedy's School's foreign affairs programs have consistently ranked at the top or near the top of Foreign Policy magazine's Inside the Ivory Tower survey, which lists the world's top twenty academic international relations programs at the undergraduate, Master's, and Ph.D. levels.[30] In 2012, for example, the survey ranked Kennedy School first overall for doctoral and undergraduate programs and third overall in the Master's category.[31]
Harvard Kennedy School is home to 14 centers, including:[38][14]
The majority of centers offer research and academic fellowships through which fellows can engage in research projects, lead study groups into specific topics and share their experiences with industry and government with the student body.
