Urban Planning Masters
An urban planning masters is the graduate degree that qualifies a professional for the practice of urban planning, and it is the standard credential the planning departments and the consulting firms of a city hire on. The degree runs for 2 years at most programmes, the first year in the core courses and the second in the specialisation and the thesis or the studio project, and it is the step up from the bachelor's that moves a student into the professional ranks. The strongest masters programmes in the United States are a small, stable group, and the ranking the field uses is the one the professional bodies and the national accreditation publish, the same list that has held for 2 decades.
The strongest programmes in the United States
The strongest urban planning masters programmes in the United States are the 6 that sit at the top of the field's own ranking, and they are stable from year to year because the ranking measures the faculty, the accreditation and the placement of the graduates. Harvard's Graduate School of Design has led the list for most of the 21st century, and its MUP programme is the reference point the others are measured against. The University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, MIT, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and UC Berkeley hold the rest of the top tier, each with a speciality: Penn for the policy and the law, Columbia for the urban design, MIT for the science and the modelling, Illinois for the regional planning, and Berkeley for the environmental and the housing. A student who enters any of the 6 carries a credential the whole market reads, and the choice between them is the speciality, not the tier.
How the ranking is built
The ranking of the urban planning masters is built on the accreditation and the survey of the profession, and the 2 measures are the standard and the reputation. The accreditation is the review by the professional body, the Planning Accreditation Board of the American Planning Association, which examines the curriculum, the faculty's competence and the outcome of the graduates, and only an accredited programme issues the degree that qualifies for the professional licence. The reputation is the survey of the employers and the faculty, the judgement of the people who hire and teach, and it is the measure that moves a programme within a tier. The 2 together, the standard the accreditation sets and the reputation the survey measures, are what the ranking reports, and the student who reads the ranking reads both at once.
What the 2 years contain
The 2 years of the urban planning masters contain a fixed structure of 4 parts, and every top programme runs the same 4 in the same order. The first year is the core, the courses in the analysis, the design and the law that every planner must hold, and it is the year the student learns the 3 bodies of the discipline. The second year is the specialisation, the track in transportation, housing, environment or the urban design that the student chooses, and it is the year the portfolio is built. The thesis or the capstone studio is the 3rd part, the single project that carries the student's name and becomes the sample the employers read. The practicum is the 4th, the placement in a planning department or a firm where the student does the real work under a supervisor, and it is the part that turns the degree into the job. The 4 parts together are the degree, and the order of them is the order the profession is learned in.
Fellowships and funding
The fellowships for an urban planning masters are the funding that pays for the 2 years, and they come from the 3 sources that pay for graduate work in the field, the university, the state and the private foundation. The university fellowships are the teaching and the research assistantships, the paid positions in the department that cover the tuition and a stipend, and the top programmes fund a large share of their students in this way. The state fellowships are the public service awards, the grants for the student who commits to work for a public agency after the degree, and they are the route into the planning department with the debt already paid. The private foundations are the named fellowships, the awards for a speciality like the housing or the environment, and they are the ones a student applies for on top of the university offer. The 3 sources together mean a funded student can enter the top tier without the loan, and the fellowship is the deciding factor for many who choose between 2 programmes of the same tier.
How to choose between the top programmes
To choose between the top urban planning masters programmes, the applicant weighs 3 things that differ from programme to programme, and the 3 are the speciality, the city and the funding. The speciality is the track the programme is strongest in, and the 6 top programmes each lead a different one, so the choice of the track is the first filter. The city is the setting of the studio work, because the project is drawn on the city around the campus, and a student who wants the design of a coastal city chooses the programme that sits in one. The funding is the fellowship the programme offers, the share of tuition it covers and the stipend it pays, and it is the number that makes the 2 years possible. The 3 together, the speciality that matches the work the student wants, the city that supplies the studio, and the funding that pays the degree, are the 3 that decide the choice, and the ranking tier is the floor they all share.