The February 23rd Edition of City & State Magazine - Graduate Schools Supplement

GRADUATE SCHOOLS SUPPLEMENT

GRADUATE SCHOOLS SUPPLEMENT

city & state — February 23, 2015

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ity & State magazine presents its Graduate and Continuing Education Series in an effort to inform our readers, the leaders and future leaders of New York, about the many educational opportunities the state has to offer. Whether a government staffer, business executive or nonprofit advocate, graduate and continuing education programs abound to assist you in attaining applicable training and knowledge. The articles featured in this section outline the benefits of continuing education programs as well as what to look out for when applying. This series features four installments throughout the year, so stay tuned for additional helpful information in future editions. cit yandstateny.com

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By LOGAN HARPER from CAREEREALISM

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ecause both a Master of Public Administration (MPA) and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) focus on organizational management, students who want to work in the public sector are sometimes unsure about which professional degree to choose.

Although there is some overlap in the coursework for these two degrees, there is a key difference in program focus. An MBA program provides training in private sector management.

The success of a private business is primarily measured by its profitably, so business schools are geared toward training future managers to make as much money as possible. The emphasis is on economics, finance, and marketing, preparing students

to lead business organizations where profit generation is the goal.

In contrast, an MPA program concentrates on management of nonprofit and public sector organizations. The mission of these organizations is to serve humanity and improve the social condition. Managers in public sector organizations need to understand that the success of their organization is difficult to measure.

They also must be prepared to make trade-offs between the demands of competing groups of citizens and government agencies.

Another key difference between private businesses and public sector organizations is how they obtain funding for their continued operation.

In the case of private businesses, funding

is a component of profit generation.

Public sector organizations are usually funded by donations, foundations, and government grants. An MPA program will provide the skills needed to obtain this specific funding.

In the end, MBA programs concentrate on the economic market while MPA programs are concerned with working toward social solutions.

If you’re determined to make positive changes in the world, an MPA degree provides the skills and knowledge to make your idealism a reality. An MPA will provide the training needed to navigate through the complex nonprofit environment, as well as provide opportunities to think about solving problems with immeasurable outcomes that are faced by public sector

organizations.

An MPA degree may also provide more career flexibility. Most business school graduates stay in the private sector for their entire career, while MPA graduates can move between public, nonprofit and private sector employment. In addition, MBA graduates who want to work in the public sector may have a harder time finding employment since their academic background provided limited exposure to public policy subjects.

GRADUATE SCHOOLS SUPPLEMENT

MPA VS. MBA PROGRAMS

This article originally appeared on Careeralism.com, an education technology company.

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Earn Your Law Degree in a 2-Year Accelerated Program Brooklyn Law School’s 2-year J.D. program is designed for select students seeking a rigorous legal education in an abbreviated timeframe. Highly qualified candidates with a demonstrated ability to handle a challenging workload are encouraged to apply.

Students in the 2-year program are able to take advantage of the full range of activities such as participating in extra and co-curricular activities, including clinics, externships, moot court, journals, and student organizations.

Limited seats are still available for the incoming May 2015 class.

Visit www.brooklaw.edu/2year to learn more.

city & state — February 23, 2015

The 2-year J.D. involves the same amount of work as our 3- and 4-year programs, but in a concentrated 24 months. To complete the degree requirements, students take courses during the summers before and after their first year, over spring and winter intersessions, and during the fall and spring semesters.

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GRADUATE SCHOOLS SUPPLEMENT

UPWARD MOBILITY

MPA PROGRAMS PROVIDING ROUTE TO SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

By SEB MURRAY from BUSINESSBECAUSE

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s managers turn to careers with a social impact, and global development organizations hire more private sector executives, business students are looking to Master of Public Administration programs.

“Management skills are the top priority [in the public sector], even more than public policy expertise,” says Ian Macdonald, director of the public management specialization in the MBA program at Schulich School of Business in Canada.

There are a growing number of top business schools to offer Master of Public Administration (MPA) degrees.

In the U.S., master and undergraduate degrees in public administration have grown from

17,000 in 2010 to almost 21,000 in 2013, says Kathy Gamboa, dean of operations for the College of Criminal Justice and Security at the University of Phoenix.

This is in response to increased applicant demand. The number of international applications for the MPA program at USC’s Price School of Public Policy, for instance, has surged from 78 in 2009 to 340 in 2014, says Peter J. Robertson, associate professor.

He says there is “more interest on the part of the younger generation to want to make a difference in the world, to help address the issues they see as challenging the human race.”

Research recently published by international business school INSEAD found that millennials – those born

between the early 1980s and late 1990s, who populate most MPA and MBA programs – value work-life balance and personal development over money and status.

Of 16,000 people surveyed, 73 percent chose work-life balance over a higher salary, and 82 percent value work-life balance over their position in a company.

“Students in the MPA program have stated overwhelmingly that they have a desire to help people,” says Kathy at the University of Phoenix.

These students are moving into careers in global organizations that increasingly are collaborating with the private sector.

This includes the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the

UN Capital Development Fund, as well as newer organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and even consultancy firms such as Accenture.

There are now a wider range of MPA programs to choose from. Many are at universities with top business schools, including the MPA program at UNC-Chapel Hill.

“We have experienced an increase in the number of applications we receive,” says Bill Rivenbark, director of the program, for both the online learning option and the campus course.

The MBA at UNC is popular but there are distinct differences. Bill says: “The goal [of MPA students] is to improve the quality of life for individuals across local, state, national,

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Urban Policy and Planning at HUnter college A SmArt ChoiCe

CITY & STATE — February 23, 2015

With 66% of the world’s population expected to be living in cities by 2050, there is no better time than now to study urban policy, leadership and planning. And no better place to do it than at Hunter College, located in the heart of New York, the most dynamic city in the world.

The hunter College Department of Urban Affairs offers an MS degree in Urban Policy and leadership, an MUP in Urban Planning, and an undergraduate major in Urban Studies. The department’s distinguished faculty are affiliated with the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter, one of New York City’s premier venues for public affairs discourse and debate. http://www.hunteruap.org

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or international boundaries.”

As the boundaries between public and private sector begin to crumble, development careers for its students have begun to change.

“The type of management required has changed, especially in terms of its ability to function effectively in a fast-paced and continually changing environment,” says Henrik P. Minassians, director of the school’s public sector partnerships.

Across the Atlantic in the UK, there are MPA degrees at Warwick Business School, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the University of York, to name a few.

Increasingly, many business schools are blending MBA and MPA programs together into dual degrees.

It is a similar story at elite US institutions including Harvard Business School and Wharton School.

While there is a demand for experienced private sector talent in the development world, social entrepreneurship is a popular route in both MBA and MPA programs.

“Many in our in master’s level classes state that when they finish their MBA, they would like to start their own business,” says Kathy at the

University of Phoenix.

Divya Dhar is the co-founder of Seratis, a start-up trying to bring about a digital age in healthcare.

The start-up offers a mobile communication platform which helps coordinate, track and analyze care across medical teams.

“Healthcare is a hard industry to understand,” says Divya, who studied both an MBA and MPA at Wharton’s business and government schools.

She previously trained as a doctor and worked for healthcare companies across New Zealand. “[But] often I had no idea how to communicate with my patients,” she says.

The start-up business is all about helping healthcare providers to improve patient care.

The management side of her time at Wharton helped her to grow the venture. It has been valuable to understand the “language of business” she says. “You can easily and with confidence talk to business leads, strategic partners and investors, and understand their viewpoints.”

This article originally appeared on BusinessBecause.com.

Experience your MPA at Cornell University

GRADUATE SCHOOLS SUPPLEMENT

City and State 1/2 page ad — 4.875 x 12 inches

Samantha Cherney MPA 2014 Project Associate RAND Corporation Cornell University Photography

Prepare to become a public policy leader. Our dynamic program offers unparalleled flexibility.

Choose from a broad range of concentrations: • Economic & Financial Policy

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• Environmental Policy • Government, Politics & Policy Studies • Human Rights & Social Justice • International Development Studies • Public & Nonprofit Management • Science, Technology & Infrastructure Policy • Social Policy Take courses that tackle real world policy challenges. Spend a semester studying offcampus in Washington, DC, or at one of our international sites in India, Nepal or Italy.

Go online and learn more today: www.cipa.cornell.edu

Cornell Institute for Public Affairs 294 Caldwell Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-2602

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city & state — February 23, 2015

Or call us at: (607) 255-8018

GRADUATE SCHOOLS SUPPLEMENT city & state — February 23, 2015

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APPLY TO LAW SCHOOL NOW!

THINGS ARE LOOKING ROSY FOR THE CLASS OF 2018

By JORDAN WEISSMANN from SLATE

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his might sound weird, but here goes: Now might be a pretty good time to think about law school.

Earlier this month the National Association for Law Placement released its first look at how the J.D. class of 2013 fared on the job market.

Overall, it wasn’t pretty. For the sixth year running, the employment rate fell, as schools produced a record number of graduates for an industry without the room for them.

There was, however, a nugget of good news buried in the data. While the employment rate dropped, grads still found more jobs overall than in 2012. And as the Wall Street Journal noted earlier this week, big law firms—the kinds offering those fat, six-figure salaries that law schools like to advertise—continued to pick up their recruiting. Employers might not have been able to absorb the crush of lawyers who left campus, but hiring seems to have at least stabilized.

And that’s a huge deal. Thanks to the historic enrollment crash that has shrunk law school classes during the past few years, it means that graduates might soon be looking at a shockingly strong job market.

Here is the key number to keep in mind: 36,000. That is roughly the number of new J.D.s we should expect to graduate in 2016. Getting to that figure is pretty straightforward: In the fall of 2013, 39,700 students enrolled in law school. Given that about 10 percent of each law school class generally drops out, we should expect no more than 36,000 to reach commencement. (I’m actually rounding up the number a bit to be conservative.)

In comparison, 46,776 law students graduated in 2013. So we’re talking about a potential 23 percent plunge.

With less competition it should be

far easier for graduates to find decent work. Again, let’s assume the legal job market doesn’t grow at all in the next two years—that it simply stays flat.

What might that look like?

We can break down last year’s class, using data from the American Bar Association. Among all graduates who reported their job status, 32,775 found full-time, long-term work, meaning the job lasted at least a year. (Why is a year considered “long-term”? For one, many judicial clerkships run only that long.) Of those jobs, 26,337 required passing the bar, meaning they were typical legal jobs. An additional 4,714 were in fields that technically did not require law degrees, but where employers preferred to hire J.D.s anyway—think congressional staffers, labor organizers, or NGO workers.

Finally, 1,724 were in jobs completely unrelated to law, which sounds bad, but the reality is that a certain number of graduates always do something unconnected to their degree.

Let’s say those numbers hold. In that case, we can expect that about 91 percent of the class of 2016 will find long-term, full-time work, compared with about 72 percent last year.

About 73 percent would be in fulltime, long-term legal jobs, compared with 58 percent last year. Essentially, employment rates would look similar to those in 2007, when the mid-2000s legal hiring wave crested. That year, about 92 percent of graduates were employed, and 76.9 percent obtained legal jobs. (Both those figures included part-time and short-term positions).

Some would argue that I’m painting too rosy a picture, because law schools themselves have been pumping up their employment numbers by hiring their own graduates for yearlong jobs, for example, or funding fellowships for them at nonprofits. In 2013, schools funded 918 of these kinds of positions.

If we subtract them out, the picture is a bit less optimistic. About 88 percent of all grads would have full-time, longterm work, and 71 percent would be in legal jobs. Essentially, law grads would be partying like it was 1997.

Now, some caveats.

First and most importantly, just because law school might generally look like a better decision doesn’t meant that all programs are worthwhile.

Some lower-ranked schools will continue to deliver miserable job prospects for their students, just as they have for years.

Rather than hire from notoriously

problematic institutions like Golden Gate University or Thomas M. Cooley Law School, some employers might choose to hire underemployed attorneys who graduated into rougher job markets over the past couple of years.

Second, we’re still not heading back to the heady days of the Big Law hiring binge that ended with the recession. The era of mega-firms fighting tooth and nail for their pick of graduates and pushing entry-level salaries ever higher are dead and gone.

For 2013 grads who went to work at law firms, the median salary was just

Brooklyn Law School 2-Year J.D. Program Offers Fast Track to Career Success

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rooklyn Law School’s inaugural 2-year J.D. class began the rigorous 24-month program last May— and students are already halfway to completing the degree requirements.

Two-year J.D. students take courses during the summers before and after their first year, over spring and winter intersessions, and during the fall and spring semesters to complete the full 85 credits required for a J.D. degree.

Brooklyn Law School’s 2-year J.D. students want to graduate faster and launch their legal careers sooner.

Zareen Iqbal ’16, a former Deputy U.S. Marshal who has worked in international development, says “as a mid-career professional, I wanted to

complete my graduate education as quickly as possible.”

Guy S. Regev, M.D., ’16 says “the accelerated program allows me to earn a J.D. at a faster pace, so I can return to my profession fully prepared to be a leader in the health care field.”

Ready to make a career change? Brooklyn Law School is accepting applications for the incoming May class. Learn more at www.brooklaw.edu/2year.

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GRADUATE SCHOOLS SUPPLEMENT

6x9 Ideas Unbound ad_Layout 1 12/12/13 12:12 PM Page 1

Bar Passage Required J.D. Advantage Other Professional Position

1,694

1,801

1,724

4,421

26,193

26,193

26,193

Class of 2011

Class of 2012

Class of 2013

$95,000, compared with $125,000 in 2008. Nobody should expect a return to bubble-era pay scales. Many of the jobs available now, meanwhile, are in less prestigious corners of the industry, like legal technology companies. It’s also always possible that the legal economy will suddenly crash again.

But right now there aren’t too many signs of impending doom, even if you’re deeply skeptical, as I am, of the industry’s business model.

Third, nothing I’ve written should be interpreted as a positive reflection on law schools as institutions. The only reason the class of 2016 is looking at a relatively upbeat future is that enough students gave up on the idea of becoming lawyers amid a market that was flooded with jobless young people.

But let’s end on a positive note. If things are looking good for the class of 2016, consider this: The class of 2017 is on pace to be even smaller. And there’s still plenty of time to apply for the class of 2018, of course.

Jordan Weissmann is SLATE’s senior business and economics correspondent.

THE LIFE OF THE MIND IN THE HEART OF THE CITY

24,149

IDEAS UNBOUND

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city & state — February 23, 2015

LONG-TERM, FULL-TIME EMPLOYMENT AMONG LAW SCHOOL GRADUATES

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