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The Public Policy minor gives students a grounding in public service values that underscore the ethical pursuit of the public interest. These values include:

  • Accountability
  • Competence
  • Efficiency
  • Objectivity
  • Respect
  • Equity
  • Fairness
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About Public Policy

The public policy minor provides a grounding in public service values that underscore the ethical pursuit of the public interest with accountability, competence, efficiency, objectivity, respect, equity, and fairness. The minor seeks to serve students who wish to complement their training as liberal arts scholars with these public service values and competencies.

The public policy minor may be paired with any existing major at Carleton. No political science-economics double majors may add the public policy minor. Other double majors ought to discuss their plans with the director.

No more than four courses may be taken in the same department or program. Any course taken for the core cannot be applied towards the electives requirement. Since STAT 120 is part of the Economics major, students who are Economics majors may not take ECON courses to satisfy the elective requirement.

Requirements for the Public Policy Minor

Minor Requirements – 48 Total Credits

Required Courses – Required 36 credits (6 courses)

Economics Core Courses – (18 credits)

Statistical Methods Course – (6 credits)

In cases in which students have AP Statistics credit, they are required to take one of the following additional methods or statistics courses with an applied focus: ECON 329: Econometrics, STAT 230: Applied Regression Analysis, POSC 230: Methods of Political Research, SOAN 240: Methods of Social Research or PSYC 200: Measurement and Data Analysis in Psychology. Students with more advanced statistics training may substitute another course with the director’s approval.

Gateway Course – (6 credits)

  • POSC 265: Public Policy and Global Capitalism

Ethics Course – (6 credits)

  • ENTS 210: Environmental Justice
  • PHIL 213: Ethics
  • PHIL 221: Philosophy of Law (not offered 2026-27)
  • POSC 226: Biopolitics
  • RELG 213: Religion, Medicine, and Healing (not offered 2026-27)
  • RELG 219: Religious Law, Il/legal Religions (not offered 2026-27)
  • RELG 224: Religion, Science, and the Moral Imagination (not offered 2026-27)
  • RELG 225: Faith and Doubt in the Modern World (not offered 2026-27)

Elective Courses – Required 12 credits (2 courses)

At least one of the electives courses must be designated as including “advanced work.” All 300-level courses represent advanced work. Some 200-level courses may be designated as representing advanced work, or the director and the relevant department or professor may define a course for a particular student as advanced work. Normally, advanced work includes independent research or project-based learning beyond the classroom, including community-engaged work.

The electives are listed under the following “clusters.” Both courses may be taken in the same cluster or they may be divided between clusters. Required core courses cannot simultaneously count towards electives.

Economic Policy-Making and Development

  • ECON 240.01: Microeconomic Development in Bangladesh: Microeconomics of Development (26/FA)
  • ECON 241: Macroeconomic Growth and Development (not offered 2026-27)
  • ECON 270: Economics of the Public Sector
  • ECON 274: Labor Economics (not offered 2026-27)
  • ECON 275: Law and Economics
  • ECON 280: International Trade
  • ECON 281: International Finance (not offered 2026-27)
  • ECON 286: Economic Beliefs, Political Beliefs, and Identity (not offered 2026-27)
  • ECON 287: AI: Economic Impacts, Challenges, & Opportunities
  • POSC 220: Digital Leviathans: Sovereignty, AI, and Quantum Computing
  • POSC 266: Urban Political Economy (not offered 2026-27)
  • POSC 286: Economic Beliefs, Political Beliefs, and Identity (not offered 2026-27)
  • POSC 361: Approaches to Development
  • POSC 364: Capitalism and Its Critics (not offered 2026-27)
  • RELG 227: Liberation Theologies (not offered 2026-27)

Public Health

  • BIOL 234: Microbiology
  • BIOL 240: Genetics
  • BIOL 310: Immunology
  • BIOL 338: Genomics and Bioinformatics
  • BIOL 370: Seminar: Selected Topics in Virology (not offered 2026-27)
  • ECON 264: Healthcare Economics (not offered 2026-27)
  • HIST 239: Plague, Pox, Poverty: Public Health in Britain (not offered 2026-27)
  • IDSC 238: Vaccines: Science, Skeptics, and Stakeholders (not offered 2026-27)
  • NEUR 260: Health Psychology
  • PSYC 260: Health Psychology
  • RELG 233: Gender and Power in the Catholic Church
  • SOAN 118: Introduction to Medical Anthropology
  • SOAN 262: Anthropology of Health and Illness (not offered 2026-27)

Environmental Policy and Sustainability

  • BIOL 210: Global Change Biology
  • BIOL 338: Genomics and Bioinformatics
  • ECON 269: Economics of Climate Change (not offered 2026-27)
  • ECON 271: Economics of Natural Resources and the Environment
  • ECON 273: Water and Western Economic Development (not offered 2026-27)
  • ECON 284: Power, Electricity, Environment, and Policy
  • ENTS 210: Environmental Justice
  • ENTS 212: Global Food Systems (not offered 2026-27)
  • ENTS 244: Biodiversity Conservation and Development (not offered 2026-27)
  • ENTS 284: Power, Electricity, Environment, and Policy
  • ENTS 288: Abrupt Climate Change (not offered 2026-27)
  • ENTS 289: Climate Change and Human Health (not offered 2026-27)
  • ENTS 307: Wilderness Field Studies: Grand Canyon (not offered 2026-27)
  • ENTS 323: Mother Earth: Women, Development and the Environment (not offered 2026-27)
  • HIST 205: American Environmental History
  • HIST 306: American Wilderness (not offered 2026-27)
  • HIST 308: American Cities and Nature
  • POSC 268: Global Environmental Politics and Policy
  • POSC 333: Global Social Changes and Sustainability (not offered 2026-27)
  • RELG 243: Native American Religions and Law (not offered 2026-27)
  • SOAN 203: Anthropology of Good Intentions
  • SOAN 323: Mother Earth: Women, Development and the Environment (not offered 2026-27)

Social Policy and Welfare

  • ECON 246: Welfare Economics and Mechanism Design (not offered 2026-27)
  • ECON 257: Economics of Gender
  • HIST 116: Intro to Indigenous Histories, 1887-present
  • PHIL 232: Social and Political Philosophy (not offered 2026-27)
  • POSC 209: Cause and Effect: Politics of U.S. Social Policy
  • POSC 257: Marx for the Twenty-First Century: Ecology, Technology, Dispossession (not offered 2026-27)
  • POSC 273: Race and Politics in the U.S.
  • POSC 274: Covid-19 and Globalization (not offered 2026-27)
  • POSC 311: Bureaucracy and Belonging: Administrative Burden in U.S. Politics and Policy
  • RELG 289: Global Religions in Minnesota (not offered 2026-27)
  • SOAN 252: Growing Up in an Aging Society
  • SOAN 272: Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
  • SOAN 325: Sociology of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction

Education Policy

  • EDUC 225: Issues in Urban Education (not offered 2026-27)
  • EDUC 242: The Future is Now: Education and Technology in the 21st Century
  • EDUC 245: School Reform: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (not offered 2026-27)
  • EDUC 250: Fixing Schools: Politics and Policy in American Education (not offered 2026-27)
  • EDUC 367: Culture Wars in the Classroom
  • HIST 203: American Indian Education 1600-Present (not offered 2026-27)
  • POSC 313: Legal Issues in Higher Education

Foreign Policy, Security and Technology

  • ASST 285: Mapping Japan, the Real and the Imagined (not offered 2026-27)
  • IDSC 256: Computation, Past and Present, in England Program: Privacy, Anonymity, Secrecy, Surveillance (not offered 2026-27)
  • PHIL 222: Fairness, Transparency, Privacy, Dread
  • POSC 220: Digital Leviathans: Sovereignty, AI, and Quantum Computing
  • POSC 231: American Foreign Policy
  • POSC 235: The Endless War on Terror (not offered 2026-27)
  • POSC 241: Ethnic Conflict (not offered 2026-27)
  • POSC 247: Comparative Nationalism
  • POSC 282: Terrorism and Counterterrorism
  • POSC 285: The U.S. Intelligence Community
  • POSC 328: Foreign Policy Analysis
  • RELG 329: Modernity and Tradition

Other Comparative Public Policy Courses

  • HIST 235: Making and Breaking Institutions: Structure, Culture, Corruption, and Reform in the Middle Ages (not offered 2026-27)
  • POSC 261: The Global Crisis of Democracy (not offered 2026-27)
  • POSC 271: Constitutional Law I
  • POSC 272: Constitutional Law II
  • POSC 288: Politics and Public Policy in Washington, D.C., Program: Global Politics & Pub Policy in Washington DC
  • RELG 266: Modern Islamic Thought (not offered 2026-27)

Off-Campus Programs at Carleton

  • ECON Microeconomic Development in Bangladesh (winter-break program)
  • ENTS Ecology and Anthropology in Tanzania
  • HIST Wilderness Studies at the Grand Canyon (spring-break program)
  • POSC Washington D.C. Program
  • POSC Political Economy and Ecology in Southeast Asia
  • IDSC Public Health in Practice: Washington, D.C. and the Twin Cities (winter-break program)

The OCS office and the Director of the minor can recommend other public policy-relevant off-campus programs. Application of courses from these programs to the minor must be approved by the director.

Additional Departmental Notes

ECON majors who complete both ECON 270: Economics of the Public Sector and ECON 284/ ENTS 284: Power, Electricity, Environment, and Policy will not be able to use the second course as an elective as that would exceed the four course limit for majors. Note that STAT 120: Introduction to Statistics, which is required for the minor, is currently counted as part of the ECON major.

Recommended Additional Work

Students wishing to build further on their public policy training may pursue, with the support of the director or designated adviser, additional recommended work. Many of these opportunities will be listed on the Public Policy website, but these and others will be available through the Career Center and civic engagement projects from the Center for Community and Civic Engagement.