So You Been to School for a Year or Two
With apologies, this is a pampered elites only bulletin of no interest to regular people.
That said, this morning I saw someone refer to a large number of Obama appointees as having MPP degrees from HKS. Since I recognized some of the names as having HPP degrees from the Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, I immediately thought that the person in question had slipped and revealed his non-elite cards by using the wrong acronym. As I well remember, the way the acronyms work is that we have FAS (Faculty of Arts and Sciences), HLS (Harvard Law School), HBS (Harvard Business School), and KSG (Kennedy School of Government) there’s no HKS. Naturally I leapt to the interwebs to verify my assertions and found that they changed the acronym. The website formerly located at http://ksg.harvard.edu has moved to http://hks.harvard.edu and so on and so forth.
The upside to this change is that it conforms to the HLS/HBS acronym pattern. The downside is a loss of logic. HLS teaches about law. HBS teaches about business. Which implies that HKS teaches about the Kennedy family. Which would be an intriguing thing to do, but seems like an unduly narrow mission even if you add the Dead Kennedys into the mix.
52 Responses to “So You Been to School for a Year or Two”
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December 18th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Let me be the first to say: trust fund scumbag.
On a similar topic but for something actually quite serious, BHO is definitely in with the in crowd. Among other things, BHO described something that sounds an awful like something that MattY told us was just tinfoil hat talk.
December 18th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
The logic was already flawed – it should have been KGS if you wanted it to follow the algorithm.
December 18th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
You forget HMS.
There’s also HSPH, which screws everything up. (School of Public Health).
December 18th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
You seem to be pretty sensitive about the whole privilege thing, Matt, but you shouldn’t. First, if people assume you’re a jerk or whatever because you had advantages growing up– which certainly help to get into Harvard– then they’re assholes as well. Second, I think the best thing for you to do about your childhood privilege is pretty close to what you have done, be honest and upfront about it and maybe even use it to make relevant policy connections every once in awhile.
December 18th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Silly me – I always thought that KSG was the Kennedy School of Graft! And I ain’t talking about the British slang usage meaning hard work.
December 18th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
this morning I saw someone refer to a large number of Obama appointees as having MPP degrees from HKS. Since I recognized some of the names as having HPP degrees from the Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, I immediately thought that the person in question had slipped and revealed his non-elite cards by using the wrong acronym.
Did they also confuse the MPP with a mysterious “HPP” degree or is that Matt slipping and revealing his non-elite brain by making yet another typo?
December 18th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
It pleases me to be the first one to catch the DK reference in the post title. Don’t forget to pack a wife.
December 18th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Appoint enough Kennedys to senate vacancies, and the focus of HKS might become broad enough…
December 18th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
For what ever else this thread is worth, the Dead Kennedys reference brings up the chance to point out (or remind people of) the existence of a group called “The Dead Kenny Gs,” a clever name and a great idea.
December 18th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Some time ago they *tried* to change it to HGS–Harvard Government School–and got creamed and quickly recanted.
I believe that was when the Street Formerly Known as Boylston became Kennedy Street…
December 18th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
When do the Kelly (Pre-)School of Blogwhoring open its doors?
December 18th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Best damn blog post title since at least, oh, last week. Damn, here I am, singing the song in my head as you prattle on about TLAs (three letter acronyms), and suddenly you bust out the wippit. Yglesias Über Alles!
December 18th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
I’ll join in being elitist, as a KSG MPP who graduated in June.
They changed it suddenly almost exactly a year ago– while we were gone over winter break. I refused (and still do) to call it HKS– while KSG isn’t perfect by any means, at least it mentions government in it.
To add on what Brad said, they did try that and were quickly shot down by the Kennedy family, and that is the problem– if they wanted a three letter acronym, one letter had to be a K for Kennedy and one letter presumably had to be an S for School, so KSG and HKS are really the only two plausible alternatives. Unfortunately, I think HKS is the weaker of the two.
By the way, THE definitive article on the Kennedy School, which is a thoroughly entertaining read, was in the NYT Magazine on March 12, 1989, starring Robert Reich and legendary KSG prof Richard Zeckhauser.
December 18th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
How did you miss this?
December 18th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
ok, let me admit to not even being elite enough to having seen the abbreviations MPP and HPP before. (I believe that undergraduates at the Woodrow Wilson School get AB degrees like the rest of us.) Googling will tell you the first is a movement to legalize pot, and the latter is something to do with racing in Dallas, a hospital preparedness program (prepared for what?), a Japanese rock band, or a park in Hawaii. But hey, elites depend on insider things like this. A pseudo-elite like me, who’s editing a sociology textbook, could make it an example in a chapter.
December 18th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Actually, the only acronym discussed above is FAS. The rest are merely abbreviations. (Acronyms are abbreviations pronounced as words. HBS, HKS, HLS, and KSG are not.)
Does this correction count as being elitist?
December 18th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
I can’t believe I read this blog. Oh well.
December 19th, 2008 at 12:20 am
Though this doesn’t relate to Harvard at all, I have to say that it tickles me no end that not only is there a Dead Kennedys pack for Rock Band and I managed to get a friend to download it, but also that I managed to convince three 20-somethings who had never heard of the DKs to play California Uber Alles while I did my best Jello impersonation at the staff Xmas party the other night.
December 19th, 2008 at 12:47 am
Dave: none of them are pronounced as words. It’s “F-A-S”
Brad: yes, that’s correct. The city renamed the street when it looked like the university might take “Kennedy” out of the name of the school. But then they kept it, so now “Kennedy” is attached to both.
December 19th, 2008 at 12:53 am
Did Dick Cheney take a holiday in Cambodia? Perhaps that is where he learned all about how to torture people.
December 19th, 2008 at 1:28 am
I would add that HBS is one of the few top business schools without a benefactor’s name in the title. U of Chicago just became the Booth School in November. Here is BusinessWeek’s list of the top b-schools:
1 University of Chicago (Booth)
2 Harvard University
3 Northwestern University (Kellogg)
4 University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
5 University of Michigan (Ross)
6 Stanford University
7 Columbia University
8 Duke University (Fuqua)
9 MIT (Sloan)
10 UC Berkeley (Haas)
11 Cornell University (Johnson)
12 Dartmouth (Tuck)
13 NYU (Stern)
14 UCLA (Anderson)
15 Indiana University (Kelley)
16 University of Virginia (Darden)
17 UNC – Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler)
18 Southern Methodist (Cox)
19 Carnegie Mellon (Tepper)
20 University of Notre Dame (Mendoza)
December 19th, 2008 at 1:34 am
I came to Cambridge in 1998, so it’s hard for me to imagine that the Kennedy School was once the site of some railroad tracks.
Similarly, I came to Chicago in 2006, and it’s hard to imagine that Millennium Park was just some ugly railroad tracks.
December 19th, 2008 at 2:43 am
You tried to warn me, but I read the damn post anyway.
December 19th, 2008 at 7:56 am
“HLS teaches about law. HBS teaches about business.” HBS also gives degrees to idiots, as our MBA Presidency demonstrates.
December 19th, 2008 at 9:02 am
Wow having a school named after a Kennedy… which one is it?
Is it the man who made his fortune bootlegging in prohibition?
Or is it the one who started the Vietnam War?
Maybe its named after the drunk who drove off a bridge and killed a woman?
Or is it the racist who ordered the FBI to tap MLK’s phone?
Great history those Kennedy’s have, almost as good as the Bushes!
December 19th, 2008 at 9:18 am
Dave, while I myself used “abbreviation” and like to fight the rearguard action that acronyms must be pronounced as words, it’s a losing battle. Thus, my pseudo-elite response as an editor would be not to complain too harshly. “Acronym” has become widely used for abbreviations common enough to stand on their own as recognized entities (well, basically as words), and there’s increasing dictionary support, sad to say.
Random House Unabridged (house dictionary for Times crosswords) refers to abbreviations that have become “words,” without explaining further whether they have to be pronounced as words of that spelling would. Webster’s Collegiate (most common house dictionary in publishing) has “a word (as NATO, radar, or laser) formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term ; also : an abbreviation (as FBI)” and refers you to “initialism.”
December 19th, 2008 at 9:34 am
I thought this country was a meritocracy again. Why isn’t Obama appointing people who actually had to work for their grades?
December 19th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Harvard-related acronyms
Stuff White People Like.
December 19th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Fine…
Harvard-related intials
There needs to be a better word, since technically these aren’t acronyms. sigh.
December 19th, 2008 at 10:01 am
And, of course, the Harvard Divinity School teaches you how to become a god.
December 19th, 2008 at 10:01 am
I, too, have an MPP from the KSG, on Boylston Street. But I got mine in 1983, a few years before most of the folks joining the Admin now. We graduated during the Reagan Admin, and most (except Bob Kagan) had to wait awhile before going into gov’t. I like being a part of the elite…
December 19th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Who else has a Master in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Govnt?
Bill O’Reilly.
Great company there!
December 19th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Actually, the only acronym discussed above is FAS. The rest are merely abbreviations… Does this correction count as being elitist?
No, it doesn’t count as elitist. It does, however, count as being pedantic. (So does this meta-commentary!)
December 19th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Jimboslice — an MPA degree and an MPP degree are SO NOT the same thing. A lot of the MPA students are mid-career, and alot of them get their degrees in one year. The MPP is a two-year program. It does not train administrators, it trains policy wonks. Its hard to compare across schools, too, because some of the MPAs out there (Princeton, for example), are the same as the KSG MPP.
December 19th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Caroline seems to be on track to be Senator and, who knows, maybe she’ll be running for President in eight years.
It may not be too long before the HKS really does basically teach about the Kennedys….
December 19th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Amyfw:
You probably know all this, but HKS MPP students are required to take basically the equivalent of college freshman economics and college freshman statistics. They can take more advanced classes focusing on policy analysis and quantitative rigor if they want, but not all do. A lot of students take courses like “Dynamic Leadership” , “Understanding Congress”, “Trust and Emotion in Negotiation”, and so on.
Yes, MPA is a one-year degree and MPP is a two-year degree, and the student bodies are different, but in practice I don’t think the two groups come away with starkly differing knowledge.
December 20th, 2008 at 9:39 am
You also forgot HDS (Harvard Divinity School).
December 20th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
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February 18th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
nerdyguy – Come on check out the HKS course listing, I think you’ll be impressed. Lots of good budgeting, accounting, finance, political economy in HKS courses.
http://ksgaccman.harvard.edu/courses/graphic.aspx?Semester=Spring&Year=2009
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