Program Overview

---

Key information

Duration

1-year (Max. 3-years)

Start of programme

October / January / April / June

Attendance mode

Online learning (part-time)

Location

Online

Fees

£7,280

Course code

OLTF0040

Entry requirements

You should have a recognised UK Bachelor's degree, or international equivalent, in a social science discipline. Qualifications in other subjects will be assessed on their merits. Your application may be considered if you have previous education and experience, equivalent to a degree-level qualification, which includes suitable preliminary training. All international applicants must be able to show that their English is of a high enough standard to successfully engage with and complete their course at SOAS.

Course overview

The Postgraduate Diploma/Certificate in Public Management is a preparation for managing and advising public sector organisations. There is an emphasis on managing people, managing change and designing and using information systems.

Why study PGDip Public Management at SOAS?

• SOAS is ranked 38th in the UK for Accounting and Finance (Complete University Guide 2023).
• We're ranked 6th in UK for graduate employability (QS World University Rankings 2023).
• Interact with talented students, renowned academics, influential business leaders and top policy makers from around the world.
• We are specialists in the delivery of more that 40 African and Asian languages. As the economies of the Global South continue to expand, knowledge of another language and other cultures will be a big asset in the world of commerce and international trade.

Structure

You will study four modules selected from the list below.

Modules

Decentralisation and Local Governance - 30 credits

Decentralisation is a worldwide reality, as most countries are already engaged in a more or less advanced form of it. The following figures illustrate this trend: in the 1980s local governments around the world collected on average 15% of revenues and spent 20% of expenditures. By the late 1990s those figures had risen to 19% and 25% and had even doubled in certain countries. Moving beyond the fiscal arena, major public services such as education or health have also been transferred to local governments and political and electoral reforms have taken place. News headlines testify to the importance of local governance and local governments’ issues around the world.

Environmental and Social Impact Assessment - 30 credits

As you will learn in this module, the intended beneficiaries or investors are not the only audiences to whom it must be demonstrated that a project’s technical, institutional and financial attributes warrant that the project will be worthwhile. The effects a project will have ( , its impacts) on the environment, nearby communities and wider society must also be investigated so they can be taken into consideration by the decision-makers who determine whether the project should proceed.

Human Resource Management and Development - 30 credits

This module is concerned with the management and development of staff in public organisations, known popularly as Human Resource Management and Development (HRM). The basic idea is simple – that all organisations, and not just those in the public sector, can improve their performance if they manage their staff properly. Very often, HRM is also associated with a series of practices related to the main activities of managing people and that we, as employees, experience directly. This may include recruiting new staff or training and developing existing staff.

Managing Organisational Change - 30 credits

The public sector has witnessed substantial change in recent years, and change looks set to continue. Such changes began about two decades ago and were marked by a desire to privatise and ‘roll back’ the public sector. Although these processes are continuing on a global scale, more recent changes have focused on improving the capabilities of the public sector, often in terms of capacity building, or institutional or sectoral development. This in turn has led to significant changes for individual public sector organisations. Many of these changes or reform programmes have recast public sector organisations as being smaller and decentralised, often with a short lifespan, and being opened up to ‘market forces’. Of course, many large-scale bureaucracies remain; but even here change is occurring.

Project Appraisal - 30 credits

This is a module about financial and economic appraisal of projects. The project is a very specific element of the public policy and management mix. It normally consists of an investment – that is, the creation of an asset which will generate benefits, financial and non-financial over a period of more than one year. This is not universally applicable as a working definition, as ‘project’ is often used to describe a set of discrete activities that do not always involve a capital investment, to achieve some specific goals. In this module, however, we will be dealing with capital investments.

Public Policy and Management: Development Assistance - 30 credits

Governments regularly transfer cash or make concessionary loans to other governments in order to promote economic and social development, improve the welfare of the recipient governments’ citizens, or help out with humanitarian assistance after a natural or human-created disaster. Politicians from richer countries attend high-profile conferences and commit to increasing these transfers, often encouraged by popular campaigns in their home countries. Citizens of the richer countries (and many in poorer countries) regularly donate money to voluntary organisations involved in the same sorts of transfers, especially when natural disasters occur, but also at other times, hoping that their contributions will improve the lot of the world’s poorest people.

Public Policy and Management: Perspectives and Issues - 30 credits

In this module you look at the state and how it is managed. This is a huge agenda and brings in ideas from political science, from history, sociology, economics, anthropology and management science. The purposes are these:

• to establish what is meant by some key concepts such as the State, Government and Policy, which are often taken for granted but about which we need to be clear – and to understand different interpretations
• to survey the principles and practice of public management using a historical and comparative perspective
• to introduce a range of ideas that have emerged about how to manage the public sector to demonstrate the importance of context in understanding management and changing management practices.
• to raise some issues about the nature of the policy process in different contexts
• to set out some of the main debates in the field in order to help you to make your own judgements.

Research Methods - 30 credits

Research plays an essential role in business and in public policy and management. Increasingly, organisations undertake small-scale research projects, to find out about matters relating to the concerns of their organisation or to critically evaluate existing policies. Both commercial firms and government institutions rely upon research to inform their decisions, to test the effectiveness of existing policies, to predict the effects of intended future policies, to understand management processes and decisions and to gain insights into public preferences and opinions about public services.

Teaching and learning

Tuition and assessment

Students are individually assigned an academic tutor for the duration of the module, with whom you can discuss academic queries at regular intervals during the study session.

You are required to complete two Assignments for this module, which will be marked by your tutor. Assignments are each worth 15% of your total mark. You will be expected to submit your first assignment by the Tuesday of Week 6, and the second assignment at the end of the module, on the Tuesday after Week 10. Assignments are submitted and feedback given online. In addition, queries and problems can be answered through the Virtual Learning Environment.

You will also sit a three-hour examination on a specified date in September/October, worth 70% of your total mark. An up-to-date timetable of examinations is published on the website in July each year.

Study resources

• Study guide:The module study guide is carefully structured to provide the main teaching, defining and exploring the main concepts and issues, locating these within current debate and introducing and linking the assigned readings.
• Key texts:[Insert key texts for each module]
• Readings:Throughout the module you will be directed to study a selection of readings, including journal articles, book extracts and case studies that are of particular relevance and interest to the topics covered in the module.
• Virtual learning environment:You will have access to the VLE, a web-accessed study centre. Via the VLE, you can communicate with your assigned academic tutor, administrators and other students on the module using discussion forums. The VLE also provides access to the module Study Guide and assignments, as well as a selection of electronic journals available on the University of London Online Library.

Fees and funding

Tuition fees 2022/23

PG Dip (4 modules)
£7,280

Fees are inclusive of all required resources. Whilst we incorporate all of the costs into your module fees, depending on your country of residence, you may incur local costs such as: fees paid to local examination centres for sitting your examinations.

Fees may increase each year, therefore may be higher in subsequent years of study. See online learning fees for further information.

Pay as you learn

Our online learning programmes can be paid in full at the time of enrolment (thus avoiding any subsequent rise in fees).or on a pay-as-you-learn basis. Pay as you learn means you only pay for the module you are enrolling on.

Employment

Students of this programme will receive an invaluable preparation for high level appointments in government, public services, international organisations and NGOs.

Key staff

• Dr Alberto Asquer Reader in Public Policy and Management Public policy and management, especially in the political economy of regulation and regulatory reforms, public policy implementation, public management.