Urban Planning Degree
An urban planning degree is the formal education that teaches the discipline of urban planning, and it is the credential the planning jobs of a city are screened for before a single interview. The degree comes in 2 levels, the bachelor's that introduces the field and the master's that qualifies for professional practice, and the master's in urban planning is the standard degree the planning departments and the consultancies hire on. The programme is a blend of 3 bodies of knowledge, the social science that reads the city, the design that draws it, and the law that regulates it, and it is that blend, not any single one, that the degree teaches and the job requires.
What the degree covers
The content of the urban planning degree is the 3 bodies of knowledge the job runs on, and a complete programme carries all 3 in its first 2 years. The social science is the survey and the analysis, the demography, the economics and the geography that measure the city and project its growth. The design is the drawing of the plan, the site planning, the urban design and the landscape that make the plan a picture the public can read. The law is the regulation, the zoning, the land use and the environmental review that make the plan enforceable. A student who leaves with all 3 can run the analysis, draw the plan, and write the rule, and the 3 together are the scope of the licence the profession holds out. The courses are arranged in a sequence, the survey before the design and the design before the law, and the sequence is the order the real job is done in.
Is urban planning a STEM degree
The question of whether urban planning is a STEM degree has a split answer, and the 2 sides of the split are the science and the design. The science side is the GIS, the statistics and the transportation modelling, which are the engineering and the mathematics of the field, and a planner who runs the model works in STEM every day. The design side is the urban design and the landscape, which are the art and the craft, and a planner who draws the plan works in the studio. The degree itself is usually classed in the social sciences, because the credential the profession issues is the professional planning degree, not the science degree, and the 2 classifications coexist. The practical answer for the student is that the STEM skills are required inside the degree, the modelling and the mapping, and they are the part of the work that carries into the higher paid roles.
Online and part-time options
The online and part-time options for an urban planning degree exist because the profession hires working adults as well as recent graduates, and the 2 formats answer the 2 kinds of student. The online master's delivers the same core courses in a remote format, the lectures and the readings on a portal and the studio work in a scheduled studio week, and it is the route for the professional who is already employed and wants the credential. The part-time evening programme runs the same courses across 2 to 3 years instead of 2, and it is the route for the local planner who needs the degree to move up the public ladder. Both formats carry the same accreditation standard as the full time degree, and the employer screens for the accreditation and the programme, not the format, so the online graduate enters the same market as the on campus one.
What the degree leads to
The outcomes of the urban planning degree are the jobs it qualifies for, and they are the same 3 employers the planning jobs sit in, the government, the consulting firm and the university. The master's degree is the entry credential for the staff and the senior planner roles, and it is the requirement for the professional planner's licence where the country issues one. The bachelor's degree leads to the analyst and the research roles, and to the master's as the next step, because the professional practice in most countries is a graduate level field. The salary the degree supports starts near the entry figures of the market and climbs with the ladder of the roles, and the degree is the first rung of that ladder. The honest measure of the degree is the work it produces, the plans the graduate draws and the rules the graduate writes, and those are the things the next employer reads.
How to choose a programme
To choose an urban planning degree programme, the student compares 3 things, and the 3 are the accreditation, the faculty and the city. The accreditation is the standard the degree is measured against, the professional body that reviews the curriculum and the graduate's competence, and a programme that holds it issues the credential the employers recognise. The faculty is the teaching behind the accreditation, the professors who practise as well as teach, and the studio courses they lead are the part of the degree that builds the portfolio. The city is the setting the degree is taught in, because the studio work is done on the real city around the campus, and a student in a growing city draws the real problems of that city. The 3 together, the accreditation that guarantees the standard, the faculty that builds the work, and the city that supplies the problems, are the 3 the student weighs before the tuition becomes the deciding number.