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The Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree is a professional master's degree that provides training in public policy and project/program implementation (more recently known as public management). MPA programs focus on public administration at the local, state, and federal level as well as in the nonprofit sector. Through its history, the MPA degree has become more interdisciplinary by drawing from fields such as economics, sociology, anthropology, political science, and regional planning in order to equip MPA graduates with skills and knowledge covering a broad range of topics and disciplines relevant to the public sector. A core curriculum of a typical MPA program usually includes courses on microeconomics, public finance, research methods/statistics, policy process and policy analysis, ethics, public management, leadership, urban policy & GIS, and program evaluation/performance measurement. Depending on their interest, MPA students can focus their studies on a variety of public sector fields such as urban planning, transportation, health care, economic development, community development, education, non-profits, information technology, environmental policy, etc. In recent years, there has been a gradual convergence between the MPA and the master of public policy (MPP) degree after the realization that policy/project/program implementation could benefit from an understanding of policy analysis, and vice versa. Today, the course offerings of most MPA and MPP programs overlap to some degree, but MPP programs tend to provide more focused training in policy analysis and policy design, while MPA programs usually still provide more focused coursework in program implementation and public management.
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