Joint Bachelor-Master's Programs

Bachelor of Arts in International Studies and Master of International Affairs (BA-MIA)

The BA-MIA degree program is designed for students seeking advanced training in policy making, domestic and international regulation, and business innovation and reinvention in the context of international economics, economic development, and politics. The program prepares students to develop effective policy solutions for some of the world’s most pressing issues, for example, climate change, security, corporate social responsibility, the response to business disruptions, population growth, economic development, a balanced trade and business climate, and technological advances in energy technology.

Students apply in spring quarter of their junior year and, once admitted, complete their bachelor’s degree and begin graduate course work in their senior year. Once they have their BA in hand, students matriculate to only one additional year to complete the MIA requirements. BA-MIAs take the same classes as students admitted to the two-year Master of International Affairs program but pay only one year of graduate tuition. This economic efficiency was created to make a master’s degree affordable and to keep the best of UCSD’s students at UCSD.

Graduates from the BA-MIA program have gone on to take jobs in both the private and public sector, as financial consultants, and marketing specialists in major international corporations, in tech companies, major polling and public research companies, in energy start-ups, large accounting firms, and as staffers of national campaigns and departments of governments both in the US and abroad. Others have used their training at GPS to gain admissions to PhD programs in major US universities.

Watch the BA-MIA Program Information Session