Social & Public Policy

Social and public policy is the academic study of how governments and other institutions design and implement the interventions through which they seek to address social needs, manage public resources, and improve human welfare. It applies ideas from political science, sociology, and economics to understand how policies are made, how they work in practice, and how their effects are distributed across different groups in society. The discipline is concerned with some of the most fundamental questions of democratic life: how should the state respond to poverty, inequality, ill-health, inadequate housing, and the other conditions that diminish human flourishing, and what are the most effective and equitable ways to do so?

At the University of Glasgow, this four-year full-time programme engages with these questions through rigorous multi-disciplinary analysis, drawing on Glasgow's substantial research strengths in social policy, political science, sociology, and economics. A year abroad is available, giving you the opportunity to study social and public policy in a different national context, which is particularly enriching in a discipline that gains enormously from comparative perspective. You will study poverty and inequality, health policy, housing, education, welfare systems, and the political economy of public expenditure, developing both the theoretical frameworks to analyse policy and the empirical and methodological skills to evaluate its effects.

Graduates go on to careers in government, local authorities, public agencies, think tanks, international organisations, the voluntary sector, and research. Roles in policy analysis, programme evaluation, public administration, and social research are all accessible to graduates with a strong social and public policy background, and many go on to postgraduate study in social policy, public administration, social work, or related disciplines. The combination of analytical rigour and policy awareness the degree develops is valued across every sector that intersects with the design and delivery of public services.