New Joint Degree Offered

Harvard academics from both sides of the Charles have formed a collaboration to further bridge the gap between the education of future leaders in the private and public sectors.

The Harvard Business School (HBS) and Kennedy School of Government (KSG) announced yesterday that they will offer a new joint-degree program that will be available to students starting in the fall of 2008.

The program was approved by the Harvard Corporation—the University’s top governing body—on Monday, over a month after plans were finalized in February.

Through the new three-year program, students will be able to receive an MBA with either a Master in Public Policy or Master Public Administration-International Development degree.

In order to be eligible for the program, applicants must be accepted independently to both the Kennedy School and the Business School.

During their first two years, students will fulfill the core requirements of both graduate schools and attend a weekly HBS-KSG joint degree seminar. Students will take electives from both schools in their final year and attend an integrative business-government course.

The idea behind the program was first hatched in 2005, when KSG Dean David T. Ellwood ’75 and former Business School Dean Kim B. Clark ’74 agreed on the need for future leaders to be trained in working across sectoral boundaries, Ellwood said.

“Nearly every important public problem in the world involves government, business, and civil society, and so the idea here that we should work collaboratively is absolutely vital,” he said.

When Clark’s successor, Jay O. Light, replaced him in 2006, Ellwood and Light collaborated to form an exploratory committee to determine potential benefits and feasibility of creating the program.

The committee surveyed students, alumni, and faculty members and documented the existence of an “empty niche” for a program of this kind, said Pratt Professor of Business and Government Robert M. Stavins.

There is already a concurrent degree program between HBS and KSG, in which over 50 students are presently enrolled. But the creators of the new joint-degree program stressed that the new program’s curriculum will target the synthesis of knowledge particular to the individual schools through special classes during the third year of students’ studies.

“The integrative courses bring together everything they have learned in a synthetic experience,” said Stavins, who is also co-chair of the task force created to design the joint-degree program. “Practical is the important word here.”

During their final semester in the new program, students will participate in a business-government capstone exercise, which will allow them to analyze and report on a real world problem presented by a client in the private industry or in government, Stavis said.

Baker Professor of Public Management Herman B. Dutch Leonard pointed to the Hurricane Katrina crisis to emphasize the need for collaboration across sectors.

“It was a modest-sized hurricane that we turned into a national catastrophe by not being able to combine capabilities of the private and public sector,” said Leonard.

HBS Deputy Dean for Academic Affairs W. Carl Kester said there was little opposition to the program, but that the business school faculty made sure there would be demand and enough teachers at both schools before executing the plan.

“We are explicitly putting together a new curriculum to blend these new fields,” Kester said. “We are drawing on two really great faculties to deliver this program...We have very high aspirations.”

—Staff writer Brenda C. Maldonado can be reached at bmaldon@fas.harvard.edu.