They spring into action
As they move into final exams and toward summer break, a cohort of Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) students have a pressing new assignment: identifying specific strategies for improving public education in Boston. Spring Exercise provides the opportunity for first-year master in public policy (M.P.P.) students to put into practice what they’ve learned in their core subjects of economics, statistics, management, ethics, politics, and finance during their first two semesters at the School. “In the separate courses in the M.P.P. core, the students take on public problems one piece at a time — the economics piece, the ethics piece, the management piece, and so on,” said Jack Donahue, the Raymond Vernon Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and M.P.P. program faculty chair. “In the real world, the pieces of a problem gang up on you. Spring Exercise gives the students vital practice at dealing with that. Of course it’s stressful. But it’s a great...