Public Policy, Regulation, and Policy Analysis

# Public Policy, Regulation, and Policy Analysis You see a problem—crumbling infrastructure, healthcare access gaps, climate risk, workforce mismatch—and you want to fix it. You draft a policy. Then reality hits: stakeholders object, implementation breaks it, the politics shift, unintended consequences appear. You're left asking: did I solve the right problem? Did I pick the right solution? This course teaches you how to answer those questions systematically, instead of by instinct or ideology. Most policy fails at the start: the problem was misdiagnosed. You designed to fix a skill gap when the real barrier was friction. Or you regulated when an incentive would work better. Or you built a solution for the median user and left vulnerable populations behind. This course starts where most policies fail: **understanding what's actually wrong**. You'll learn the frameworks that separate what works from what sounds good. Cost-benefit analysis doesn't tell you everything, but it tells you something—and you'll know when it doesn't apply. Evidence hierarchies aren't esoteric; they're how you judge whether a study finding is real or a mirage. Stakeholder mapping isn't politics; it's engineering—understanding the constraints that make some solutions impossible and others inevitable. But knowing frameworks isn't enough. You'll learn to implement policy so it actually changes what people do. You'll see why 90% of policies drift in execution, and how to spot and fix drift before it's invisible. You'll measure whether your policy actually worked—not whether people say it will, but what they actually do. You'll confront the hard parts. Unintended consequences—your regulation cuts pollution but kills jobs in a community that can't adapt. Equity gaps—your program works great for affluent users and leaves behind poor ones. The ethics: when you nudge people toward what you think is good, are you respecting their autonomy or manipulating them? Political reality—the policy that would work best can't pass; now what? This isn't a course about your ideology. It's a course about what's real: evidence that holds up, stakeholder interests that actually matter, implementation that actually happens. You'll leave knowing how to define problems rigorously, compare options fairly, read evidence honestly, and communicate tradeoffs to decision-makers and communities. Not a formula; a way of thinking. Policy is learnable. The discipline is there. This course teaches the craft.