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Dream came true when we flew to the United States in January this year to spend the Spring semester at the University of California Berkeley, one of the US partner school for Universiti Brunei Darussalam under the Masters of Public Policy and Management program. We enrolled in Negotiations; Ethics, Policy and the Power of Ideas; Storytelling for Leadership; and Energy Regulation & Public Policy. The extensive readings and interesting discussions in class makes you engrossed in the topic. In the US,  for Energy Regulation & Public Policy class we get to write a policy paper for a client on the energy issues in California, which we look forward to doing as it will certainly enrich our knowledge on the Energy Regulation and Policy in the US and hope to apply analytical and research skills when we return to our respective employers. Thankfully, the grueling modules and classes that we took in the first semester in UBD helps give us a solid grounding on the statistical and analytical methodology to help prepare for this semester.

The most salient characteristic of the MPPM programme is that students can learn heterogeneous approaches, methods and practices in policy-making processes not only in Brunei Darussalam, but also at the leading Universities in the United States of America. The faculty was so hospitable and supportive to all international students. We felt like being at home! Undoubtedly, the MPPM programme will be beneficial for my future career and for my entire family.

MPPM is a well organized and well designed program, it is structured in such a way that the scholars are well exposed and well prepared for the current issues and future challenges surrounding Public Policy and other related policy problems. At some point the Scholars of the MPPM at IPS can learn far beyond the boundaries of the classroom and interact with people of all walks of life through seminars and conferences. 

Our professional and competent lecturers relating to real-life experiences and well stocked library made learning enjoyable. I enjoyed each of the modules, enabling me to discover a lot of interesting facts about policy making and governance. GPM opened up my mind on how the global community can influence and shape domestic policy, Political Islam on how and why political groups use religion as a vehicle for their political agendas, Economic foundations of public policy on how you can effectively use scarce resources to foster national economic growth,  policy analysis equipped me with the knowledge and skills to analyse policy problems, to develop, implement and monitor interventions, and Statistics with skills on using various software to analyse quantitative data.