Sample Thesis and Outline for Major Paper 4: Policy Brief
Since the final draft of Major Paper 4, your Policy Brief, won’t be written in the form of an essay, it might make sense in the early stages of putting it together to organize your ideas in the form of a detailed outline, instead of writing out paragraphs or something like a traditional rough draft.
To help you see how you could organize your Policy Brief, I’ve created an example of a very detailed outline on a topic similar to the ones you’ve been researching. As you’ll see, my outline is related to the question, “What should DU do to improve our second year persistence rates?” (Persistence rates are the way schools measure the number of students who stay enrolled in school and eventually progress towards earning a degree.)
I’ve first written out a clear, direct thesis statement that explains the argument I am trying to make in my Policy Brief. Having it written out first helps me ensure the rest of the outline stays focused on discussing and supporting that idea.
After that, I’ve written a very detailed outline of what I want to say. I start with an introduction that explains what the topic is about. I then discuss some policy options I learned about through my research and the survey I did, that other people were claiming could be helpful—and then I offered my critiques of whether or not I believe they are good ideas for DU. Finally, I listed the specific policy recommendations I am proposing DU should enact.
Now I admit, this is a much more extensive outline than you would probably create for your own Policy Brief. And your Policy Brief probably won’t include as many critiques of other’s policy options or have as many specific policy recommendations.
But what I like about it is, now that it’s written it will be extremely easy for me to write my Policy Brief because all the info is already here. The only thing left to do is add a short conclusion and a works cited list, and then put the information into a smart design that organizes and highlights the key points.
So give the following example of a rough thesis and outline a look, and consider using this approach to develop your draft of Major Paper 4—your Policy Brief.
Preliminary Thesis
:
DU needs to become more involved in the academic and social life of its first-year students because our second-year persistence rates would significantly increase if we were better addressing the needs of students in these two areas.
Rough Outline
:
I. Introduction: (description of the problem and why it’s important to address it now)
· Open with anecdote from my interview of Kim Martin and her first-year experience:
· She attended a college across the country from her home and never felt comfortable at the school. She got decent grades, but didn’t get involved in any activities on campus and never spoke to any of her professors outside of class. After her first year she transferred to a community college closer to home and felt much happier there, although she knew she was settling for a less prestigious degree.
· Detailed description of issue; what DU does to encourage student persistence
· Statistics on national persistence rates, rates at DU, and other area schools (use a graph?)
· DU prioritizing small class sizes, living on campus first two years
· First year sequence of FSEM, WRIT classes; living and learning communities
· Student organizations, sports, “wellness” programs, DSP/LEP system, International House
II. My Critique of the Policy Options Most Often Suggested by Others to Improve DU’s Persistence Rates:
· Policy Option: Provide greater access to financial aid for students experiencing cost pressures.
· Critique: DU has actually already more than doubled the amount of money it makes available to students in need in the past seven years, but the results of my survey of DU freshmen shows not everyone who could benefit from this is aware the assistance is available. (Include small chart showing survey results here?)
· Policy Option: Offer greater academic “safety-nets” (like remedial classes, tutoring, or “help centers”) for students who are struggling with university academic expectations.
· Critique: Describe the “safety-nets” DU already has; explain the info I found in the Journal of Higher Education that says very few students who leave a school like DU do so primarily because they weren’t able to do college-level work.
(I’ll probably need to address that this article was speaking about a college in Virginia, but why I think the specifics are comparable to DU.)
· Policy Option: Re-evaluate the curriculum of all academic departments and our graduation requirements to make sure they match up with the needs of students and of individuals entering professional fields.
· Critique: DU actually is in the middle of doing this right now (include info from DU website and the article from The DU Magazine on these possible changes). Because the changes are still being worked out, the effect they’ll have on persistence rates probably won’t show up for a few more years.
· Policy Option: Improve the day-to-day social experience of students.
· Critique: Give results from my survey here that show one of the largest areas of dissatisfaction for DU freshmen is with the social life on campus; describe the major student activities DU does offer; mention the big improvements made to the campus in the recent past (the rec. center and improved sports teams, new dorms and cafeteria offerings, new classroom buildings, etc.), but there is still much that could be done to improve on this. (List some of the recommendations I received from students in my survey in a text box on right side of the page?)
III. My Specific Policy Recommendations:
· The primary way DU could improve its second-year persistence rates is to create a stronger relationship between students and the school, both academically and socially. (Include my survey results that show graduating DU students say they feel like they have a much strong connection/relationship with the school than freshmen report.) This could best be accomplished by forcing freshmen to become more involved with the school.
· Recommendation 1: Continue having FSEM teachers serve as freshmen academic advisors, but require all freshmen to meet with their advisors at least three times each quarter to “touch base” on all academic matters.
· Recommendation 2: Create more “campus communities” in the dorms, centered around academic/social interests of students (give examples from Univ. of Iowa).
· Recommendation 3: Require all freshmen to participate in at least four campus events outside of class each quarter. These events could take a wide variety of forms (e.g. theater, music, speakers, films, games, volunteering, etc.) but DU would need to do much more than they currently are doing to provide worthwhile events for students to choose from.
· Recommendation 4: Dedicate additional funds to student clubs, intramural sports, and entertainment on campus to improve the vitality of campus life. This may require a slight increase in the current activity fees students pay as a part of their tuition, but my survey results show most students would be willing to pay more if they felt they were receiving more for their money.
· Recommendation 5: Boost attention on living a healthy lifestyle to reduce the likelihood of students developing problems with drugs and alcohol, as well as funding of counseling and mental health services on campus. (Info from article my research turned up on how this can be done most effectively and how successful some efforts to do this have been at other schools.)
(Note: One key element of recommendations 2-5 is that they should be run in large part by DU students. Giving first year students an opportunity to be around upperclassmen who are involved and leading organizations on campus will serve as a powerful example of the roles first year students could fill in the future.)
· Recommendation 6: This will be controversial, but in order to pay for some of these added expenses, I also recommend DU slightly reduce the money and emphasis that is currently placed on upperclassmen studying abroad. I don’t want DU to stop encouraging students to study abroad, but the current push to have 90% of DU students study abroad actually takes attention away from life on campus. Having 40-60% of students go abroad would still be outstanding and allow the school to receive most of the benefits of that larger percentage goal, but it would also allow more students to be involved and serve as leaders on campus.