To obtain a PhD in Human Development and Social Policy, students entering the program without master's degrees must complete 27 courses, including the core curriculum and electives, trial research and an annotated course outline. Those students entering the program with a master's degree are required to complete 18 courses. There are no qualifying examinations. Instead, successful completion of the Trial Research and Course Outline admit a student to PhD candidacy. The last requirement for the degree is completion of a dissertation.
The HDSP program also requires that doctoral student complete one quarter working as a Teaching Assistant.
The curriculum in the Human Development and Social Policy program involves a set of core courses in development, methods and policy, combined with three distinct specialization concentrations:
- Child Development and Social Policy
- Adult Development and Social Policy
- Human Development and Educational Policy Analysis
- critical thinking about how multiple contexts construct and shape lives
- importance of a multidisciplinary perspective, drawing on theory, methodology and research literatures from psychology, sociology, economics and political science
- strong grounding in research methodology, both quantitative and qualitative
- belief that over the long term research can affect society by influencing practices, policies and education