Why do MPA/MPP programs give so much importance to work experience?

[ACArocks]

Does anyone have any insight as to why MPA/MPP programs give so much weight to work experience compared to law school? It's insanely difficult to get a job in the WH/Senate/Agency level with just a Bachelor's degree. I have multiple internship experiences, but am worried because I have not been able to secure a job in a public service setting. 

[TheCrow]

Primarily because professional schools want to take your money and then see you do really well (as a good representation of them and help in recruiting). It's easiest for them to just admit the people with likelihood of being successful (in terms of knowing people and having already gotten promotions), rather than take people who aren't in the field and hope they'll make it work. Law school admits people in such a way as to keep the rank high (LSAT and GPA), since that's what everyone in law seems to care about, and they really don't care whether that means you'll be a good lawyer because that's not their problem.

[Ben414]

You don't have to get a job with the White House, Senate, or top federal agency. There are many, many other jobs that can provide you with great experience. I'd recommend you look at Princeton's and Yale's student profiles to see how few students at the most competitive schools are represented at those three employment sources.

[chocolatecheesecake]

On 8/19/2016 at 6:48 AM, ACArocks said:

Does anyone have any insight as to why MPA/MPP programs give so much weight to work experience compared to law school? It's insanely difficult to get a job in the WH/Senate/Agency level with just a Bachelor's degree. I have multiple internship experiences, but am worried because I have not been able to secure a job in a public service setting. 

1) It's because work experience is super important to doing public policy well. This field is all about analyzing other fields, like healthcare, education, international development, military affairs, etc, that someone without any experience in those fields is going to be a lot less effective and insightful. Bottom line: if your job is helping to set the rules by which someone else does their job, then you should know how they do their job.

2) It's because MPA/MPP programs don't teach you about what public policy is. They teach you HOW to do it, not WHAT it is. Methods and skills classes take up the bulk of what those programs offer, and especially the core curriculum. Subject matter classes are for later on, and even then, some friends believed that you should never take a graduate class on something if you can read a book about it instead. 

3) It's because work experience makes you a better student in grad school. I saw people who had more work experience were bringing more to class discussions and getting more out of our education. I really enjoyed learning directly from friends and colleagues who had been in Iraq and Afghanistan, who had taught deaf children in Kenya, who worked with coffee farmers in Guatemala. Of course, people who came straight from undergraduate were still excellent because they have to be - there's a higher bar set for them by admissions, but why handicap yourself if you don't have to?

Go get a few years of work experience: go work in a hospital or get deployed or work on a campaign or join a union or be a journalist or teach maternal health in another country. Then, if you still want an MPA/MPP, come back and contribute your ideas for doing it better. 

[Ella16]

Working really does give you a lot of insight into what you want to do and makes it easier to decide if that is the right area for you. The idea of something and actually doing it is very different and since MPA/MPPs can be very broad you need to decide what exactly you want.

Also, sometimes having a degree can actually be negative because if you're right out of university and go straight into a masters and then go find a job, most jobs will want experience unless they're entry-level. Entry-level jobs usually don't pay very much and someone with a master's will expect higher pay. Therefore sometimes employers would rather hire someone with only a bachelor's for an entry level position so they can pay them less while the senior positions will be for people who have a masters AND work experience. So say you get into a top school like HKS with no work experience, when you graduate you will be competing for higher end jobs and will compete with your classmates and people from other top schools who not only have the same prestigious degree as you but have 2+ years of experience, you will be at a disadvantage. 

Edited September 14, 2016 by Ella16

[pedropabloerr]

As for me, it's the other way around...I'm planning to pursue an MPP, and one fo the fears I have is that my fellow students will not have work experience enough to enrich the class environment. 

After having worked 3 years full time in this field, plus other 2 years in other jobs, plus internships, I finally feel like I'm ready to go back to school and to have a meaningful experience, and not just to add some more years of formal education to my resume. 

[Pound Cake]

On 19/08/2016 at 9:10 PM, chocolatecheesecake said:

1) It's because work experience is super important to doing public policy well. This field is all about analyzing other fields, like healthcare, education, international development, military affairs, etc, that someone without any experience in those fields is going to be a lot less effective and insightful. Bottom line: if your job is helping to set the rules by which someone else does their job, then you should know how they do their job.

2) It's because MPA/MPP programs don't teach you about what public policy is. They teach you HOW to do it, not WHAT it is. Methods and skills classes take up the bulk of what those programs offer, and especially the core curriculum. Subject matter classes are for later on, and even then, some friends believed that you should never take a graduate class on something if you can read a book about it instead. 

3) It's because work experience makes you a better student in grad school. I saw people who had more work experience were bringing more to class discussions and getting more out of our education. I really enjoyed learning directly from friends and colleagues who had been in Iraq and Afghanistan, who had taught deaf children in Kenya, who worked with coffee farmers in Guatemala. Of course, people who came straight from undergraduate were still excellent because they have to be - there's a higher bar set for them by admissions, but why handicap yourself if you don't have to?

Go get a few years of work experience: go work in a hospital or get deployed or work on a campaign or join a union or be a journalist or teach maternal health in another country. Then, if you still want an MPA/MPP, come back and contribute your ideas for doing it better. 

I'm going to have to agree with this. High grades during your undergrad isn't going to be as helpful as real work experience when you get to grad school. Especially in the case with MPA/MPP programs because they're professional degrees.

[kb6]

You absolutely do not have to work for the State Department or the UN to gain "relevant work experience," as others have mentioned. Try a small non-profit, Americorps, a think tank that has admin positions, a local advocacy group etc. 

But I think that these programs want you to have work experience for a very good reason - because you will have a much firmer sense of direction, you will be more marketable to employers, and you're less likely to have unrealistic expectations of the work-a-day life. (Hint: most jobs suck at least some of the time, you know less than you think, and yes you will often have to take directions from people who truly are dumber than you). 

Quite frankly, most people I knew at SAIS who came straight from undergrad have had less-than-ideal career outcomes. Of course there are a few exceptions. One of the smartest people in my cohort started straight after undergrad, but she's now doing a PhD (i.e. not entering the job market). 

I think @Ella16 describes this dynamic quite nicely. Public policy / IR is a saturated field and a 23-year-old with no work experience will never win out against a 26-year-old (let alone a 30-year-old) with a few years at a non-profit under her belt. A lot of my classmates with no previous professional experience are now doing glorified admin work, making shit money. That's kind of how you have to start out unless you:

1. have a rare, in-demand skillset (e.g. native fluency in Farsi without any security clearance issues, advanced econometrics training)
2. are undeniably brilliant / accomplished 
3. have good personal connections
4. or, get very lucky in a right place / right time kind of way

...and generally, if you have some of the above, you can probably find a way to work for a bit before applying, make your application even stronger, and possibly access the good scholarship money. For most of us who are smart but not brilliant and who lack connections, working for a few years will make us much more attractive candidates both for grad school and for the job hunt afterwards. 

ETA: at the risk of being condescending, I think it's important to understand why internship experience is not the same as professional work experience. When you see internships listed on a resume, you really have no idea if that person was making photocopies and doing coffee runs or was contributing like a junior staff member. (Personally, I have had both kinds of internships). It's very easy to bullshit details like this in an interview. And because internships are short-term by definition, you can't tell if someone who's had a string of 3-month gigs straight up sucks too much to get hired, or simply landed in multiple firms that cycle through classes of interns without ever hiring anyone. And the flip side of that is that there's no incentive to fire an intern (because of low or zero pay and a pre-defined end-date). So often truly terrible, lazy people will have multiple impressive internships under their belt because they know how to navigate the hiring process (or have connections), and then once their true nature is revealed, they're simply sidelined/ignored til the internship expires rather than being fired, leaving their resume impeccable for the next unwitting manager to be fooled by.

Edited December 6, 2016 by kb6