Ph.D. in Public Administration and Public Policy

PROGRAM OVERVIEW

The Public Administration and Public Policy (PAPP) Ph.D. program prepares future academicians and practitioners with research, policy, and administrative skills to help shape policy and improve communities, locally and globally.

This interdisciplinary program provides rigorous training in the theoretical, analytical, historical, and practical foundations in public administration, public policy, and nonprofit management.
The PAPP Ph.D. program provides students with a strong theoretical foundation, empirical rigor, and substantive and procedural knowledge concerning the field. The PAPP program offers students an interdisciplinary perspective to examining administrative and policy issues.

Graduates of our program continue to become future leaders who address complex community challenges with evidence-based, equitable, sustainable, and effective solutions in academia, government, the nonprofit, and for-profit sectors. The educational objectives and expected career paths of PAPP Ph.D. students are like other public administration and policy doctoral programs of similar size and reputation. About 75% of the PAPP students are part-time, and most students are from Texas or the local area.

DEGREE REQUIREMENTS

The PAPP Ph.D. has six required core courses, four required research courses, three elective courses in the student’s chosen emphasis area, and a minimum of nine dissertation credit hours. The six core courses address the social sciences, public policy, and public administration literatures critical to the integrative approach of the program. The methods courses include an intermediate quantitative methods course, an advanced quantitative methods course, and a qualitative methods course. The three elective courses are chosen based on the student's research interests in consultation with the faculty advisor. Descriptions of these courses are available in the University Catalog.

Equal weight is given to social sciences and public administration with the goal of integrating them and providing context to understanding policy formation and implementation. A full-time student can expect to complete these courses within two academic years. Students are also required to take twelve hours of coursework in research methods. The courses cover theory and theory construction, research design, and quantitative and qualitative research methods. They contain the foundational knowledge over which students are tested in the written comprehensive examination. Students also declare an emphasis area through three elective courses chosen in consultation with their faculty advisor to enhance their research focus.

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