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Ph.D. Program Degree Requirements

All courses are offered in-person at the University of Washington in Seattle. Ph.D. students are expected to be in residence in Seattle while taking or teaching classes. Students with financial support from the university must take a full credit load.

Ph.D. students have the choice to get a Master of Science in Public Policy and Management degree upon successful completion of the first two years of coursework, qualifying exam, and major area paper.

Before starting at the Evans School, incoming students must have prior graduate coursework in calculus and participate in our week-long math camp.

Ph.D. Degree Requirements

Core Courses

PPM 506: Advanced Microeconomics for Policy Analysis

Introduction to advanced economic theory. Covers core models in consumer theory, producer theory, and public economics. Topics include: consumer choice, the theory of the firm, choice under uncertainty, neoclassical and behavioral models of inter-temporal choice, basic game theory, externalities, public goods, and an introduction to welfare economics. Recommended: multivariate calculus; intermediate microeconomic theory.

PPM 514: Organizations, Management, and Theory

Explores key theories of organizations and management employing perspectives from sociology, political science, economics, and public management. Theories are applied in the context of private, nonprofit, and public sector organizations. The course builds on the required course PPM 504 Institutional Perspectives. Recommended: PPM 504

PPM 504: Perspectives on Institutions

Prepares doctoral students for careers in research and teaching public policy, management, and leadership by introducing foundational scholarship on the major institutional forces that influence the policy process. Examines key critiques as well as integration and application of the perspectives to public policy and management challenges.

PPM 508: Public Policy Processes

Political science frameworks, approaches, and theories concerning development and implementation of public policies within American and other democratic political systems. Governmental behaviors and processes, including rational, political, and bureaucratic models of governmental decision making; agenda-building processes; and the role of institutions in constraining and enabling policy change.

PPM 510: Public Policy Analysis

Reviews public policy analysis and evaluation building on prior study of microeconomics, policy processes, research design, and statistics. Covers theoretical and interdisciplinary frameworks and applications of empirical methods to policy problems and solutions, and considers regularities in incidence, and effects of the use of alternative policy tools.

PPM 502: Research Design

Provides a rigorous foundation for interdisciplinary research design. Introduces iconic types of theory (predictive, interpretive, and explanatory) and the philosophical foundations underlying research design. Reviews a range of methodological approaches to research: experimental and quasi-experimental, ethnographic, comparative case-study, statistical, meta-analytic, simulations, and triangulation.

PPM 500: Proseminar in Public Policy & Management

Engages students with faculty to discuss research in public policy and management. Provides an effective means to become familiar with research agendas and opportunities in this field, and other aspects of socialization into the academic process, including teaching, grant writing, and publishing. Credit/no-credit only.

Statistics (2)

Required Electives

  • Qualitative and quantitative methods (2)
  • Structural inequality (1)
  • Area of specialization (3)

Other Requirements

  • Qualifying exams taken in the summer after first year of the program.
  • Major area paper
  • Teaching assistantship

Dissertation

  • General exam to propose dissertation
  • Dissertation work
  • Final exam to defend dissertation