After intervening public and private sector employment, from 1972 to 1973 he attended Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, receiving the M.P.A.

After the 1970 election defeat of Nebraska's Republican governor, Norbert T. Tiemann, Bereuter worked as an independent city and regional planning consultant in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain West and as a part-time associate professor in the graduate planning programs of both Kansas State University and the University of Nebraska.

After his congressional service, Doug Bereuter was active in public service as a long term board member of the Arbor Day Foundation and the Nebraska Community Foundation, on supporting food security and agricultural development in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, where he is a Distinguished Fellow, and for seven years as a member of the State Department's International Security Advisory Board.

On the Banking Committee, he served for 16 years as chairman or ranking minority member of its International Financial Institutions Subcommittee.

Bereuter also served a total of nearly 10 years on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, retiring as its vice chairman.

He also was co-author of the Bereuter-Levin Amendment, which made possible the passage of the act granting Permanent Normal Trading Relations with China.

[5] In 2004, Bereuter endorsed state Senator Curt Bromm, Speaker of the Nebraska Legislature, as his successor in the U.S. House of Representatives.

[6] From a field of seven Republican candidates in Nebraska's Primary Election, Senator Bromm came in second behind Jeff Fortenberry after the Club for Growth made a large, last minute campaign contribution to defeat him.

[7][8] Shortly before he left Congress, Bereuter released a statement calling the Iraq War, which he had previously supported, "a mistake," and strongly criticized a "massive failure" of pre-war intelligence.