Master of Science in Social Policy and Public Health
Utrecht University
Key Information
Campus location
Utrecht, Netherlands
Languages
English
Study format
On-Campus
Duration
1 year
Pace
Full time
Tuition fees
EUR 2,209 / per year *
Application deadline
Request info
Earliest start date
Request info
* EU/EEA, Surinam or Swiss students; €17,500: International students
Introduction
Study Social Policy Related to Public Health and Wellbeing
Do you ever wonder why mothers are more likely than fathers to work part-time and care for their children? Or why do some countries oblige unemployment benefit recipients to follow strict activation requirements while others do not? Maybe you’ve thought about what the expected and real-life benefits and challenges of the decentralization of care are? Or how societies are changing as a result of increasing cultural diversity and social inequality?
If you are interested in studying such issues, this one-year Master's program is for you. You will develop knowledge about interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives on social policy and interventions, which will help you gain in-depth insight into the methodology and skills needed to research social policy and intervention issues in the domain of health and wellbeing, in particular related to work, care, and participation. More specifically, you will look into problems such as:
- Combining work and care
- (Youth) unemployment
- Social and cultural diversity
- Social inequality and exclusion
- Social care and participation
You will also study people's strategies for dealing with social risks, including:
- Life-long learning
- Labour market mobility
- Social entrepreneurship
- Innovative care networks
- Multicultural collaborative efforts
- Cultural diversity and integration
- Neighborhood initiatives
This will be done by combining knowledge from the behavioral and social sciences.
Program Outcome
This Master's program is intended to enable you to become an academic professional. As a graduate of the Social Policy and Public Health program, you will be able to study social problems from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective. You will also have acquired the professional and academic skills necessary to design, implement, and evaluate social policies and interventions. These skills will allow you to pursue a career as a social scientist, working with government agencies, social service organizations, civil society organizations, or private sector companies.
Curriculum
Research-led teaching
The academic staff in our faculty participate in a wide variety of research projects into the problems that are central to this Master's program, including themes as diverse as:
- Social justice and social wellbeing
- Capabilities for combining work and care
- Youth and parenting in risk societies
- Social innovation in social care
- Social influence in health behaviors
- Social diversity, health, and wellbeing
- Interethnic relations, cultural diversity, and integration
- Health communication and health promotion
International program
Our Master’s program is truly an international program, in both its teaching and its orientation. Many of the problems focused on in this Master's program have strong European or global dimensions, such as aging and care, migration and ethnic relationships, individualization and solidarity, gender and sexual diversity, and social environments and health. The same goes for the policy and intervention approaches that are used to tackle these issues. You will find that this international perspective is a key feature of the program. You will learn to take this international perspective in a global teaching environment, with staff and students from the Netherlands, Europe, and beyond.
Interdisciplinary
In addition to its international, comparative perspective, the program is also characterized by its interdisciplinary and multi-method approach. This international, interdisciplinary, and multi-method focus also applies to the research you will undertake for your master’s thesis, as well as in the exploration of professional practices. In your research, you will draw on a combination of scientific perspectives from the behavioral and social sciences, in particular psychology, sociology, and cultural anthropology. In exploring professional practices, you will also draw on a combination of scientific perspectives, through a focus on social policies, mostly informed by social science, and interventions, mostly grounded in behavioral sciences.
Career Opportunities
Various social scientific positions are open to you as a graduate of our Master's program. About 10% of our graduates pursue a career in academic research, and almost 90% opt for a career elsewhere.
Professional Career
Positions
- Policymaker at the municipal, provincial or national level
- Researcher (e.g., evaluation researcher, applied researcher)
- Quality assurance expert
- Consultant
Where will you work?
- Governmental authority (national, provincial, or municipal)
- Companies
- Social welfare institutions, NGOs
- Private or not-for-profit organizations in the social sector
- Care organizations
- Institutes for research, knowledge development, or the application and implementation of scientific knowledge of issues with regard to labor, care, and participation
(Such institutions and organizations include Movisie Netherlands Centre for Social Development, Trimbos Netherlands Institute for Mental Health and Addiction, SCP Netherlands Institute for Social Research, Verwey-Jonker Institute for Social Scientific Research (in Dutch), and (research groups of) universities (of applied sciences) focused on the social sector.
What will your work entail? Some examples include:
- As a policymaker at a municipal council, you will, for instance, be in charge of supervising the transition in youth care.
- As a consultant in a renowned commercial bureau, you will advise governmental agencies on social policy.
- As an evaluation researcher at a social organization, you oversee evaluations of recently implemented policies and interventions across diverse welfare topics.
Academic Career
Positions
- Researcher (trainee/PhD).
Where will you work?
At a university or (a research group at a) university.
What will your work entail?
You will write a Ph.D. dissertation on a given topic (for instance, on the consequences of free-market processes in the health care sector that professionals face).