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Building Bridges
Initiative Cluster Evaluation: March 2001 R.
Sam Larson, Ph.D. and Mark I. Wilson, Ph.D.
Part 2 - Continuing Education
Decision Making Part
3 - Desired Course Content "Users" or students have much to tell us about the desired outcomes associated with the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI). They also have much to tell the field about their needs and expectations of nonprofit management education. This study provides the student or "demand" perspective to a more documented and researched "supply" perspective of nonprofit management education. We surveyed students enrolled in six nonprofit management graduate and certificate programs affiliated with BBI grantee institutions. We received 256 surveys for a 50% response rate. We found that:
The W. K. Kellogg Foundation’s Building Bridges Initiative is a five-year effort to help develop more comprehensive educational programs that respond to the wide range of management and leadership needs of Third Sector leaders. The initiative includes 19 grantees in the United States and 8 sites in Latin America. The Building Bridges Initiative aims to improve the quality of life in communities through the better management and leadership of the nonprofit organizations that serve these communities. Nonprofit management education is a fundamental vehicle to enhance management and leadership skills. Nonprofit management program development is of increasing analytical interest, and the Building Bridges Initiative and its cluster evaluation provides a view of the “users” or the demand side of nonprofit management education programs. To date, research and evaluations of nonprofit management programs focus primarily on the supply side of academia – the number of courses being offered (Wish and Mirabella, 1998a, 1998b; Mirabella and Wish, 2000) and the organization and management of the centers or programs that offer these courses (i.e., Larson and Long, 1998, 2000; O'Neill, Young, and McAdam, 1988; O’Neill and Fletcher, 1998). “Users” or students have much to tell us about desired outcomes associated with the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI). For example, students can provide information about the relevance of curricular offerings, the accessibility of programs, and the ways that programs bridge theory and practice in- and out-of the classroom. This report provides the student perspective on the education and career goals of the future leaders and managers of the nonprofit sector. After a brief discussion of previous studies and reports of nonprofit management education, this paper focuses on the findings of a survey of students enrolled in nonprofit management education programs funded through the BBI. We begin by discussing the design of the survey and data collection. We then present the findings of the study starting with a profile of students. Next, we discuss why students chose to continue their education and why they chose nonprofit management programs. We then discuss students’ perspectives of the topics of greatest importance for leading and managing nonprofit organizations. We follow this with a discussion of students’ satisfaction with their programs and summarize our findings in the conclusion. The nonprofit sector can be traced back centuries, but the profession of nonprofit manager, as defined in a credentialed program, is traced by Michael O’Neill (1998) to a certificate program launched by Columbia University’s Institute for Not-for-Profit Management in 1977 and the nonprofit concentration in the MPA program at University of Missouri at Kansas City in 1981. Today, there are 91 graduate degree programs in the United States that have three or more courses in nonprofit management (Mirabella and Wish, 2000). This is a fraction of the 767 academic institutions that offer master’s degrees in business and 347 institutions offering graduate programs in public administration (Digest of Education Statistics, 1999), but the number of nonprofit programs and degrees continues to grow. The structure of graduate nonprofit management education continues to evolve. Programs are found in dedicated nonprofit programs and as components of MPA, MBA, and MSW degrees. The Guidelines for Graduate Professional Education in Nonprofit Organizations, Management and Leadership (Guidelines) prepared in 2000 by a task group from the Nonprofit Academic Centers Council (NACC) and the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA) suggest that programs should meet these requirements:
The Guidelines also suggest that programs address two types of courses: those unique to the nonprofit sector and those of importance but not unique to the sector. Unique topics include the history, values, ethics and philosophies of nonprofits, their legal structure, revenue sources, and governance. Important, general topics include budgeting, organizational theory, and quantitative analysis. While not suggesting what the content of a program should be, Wish and Mirabella (1998a, 1998b) and Mirabella and Wish (2000) have classified the course topics of current nonprofit programs. They found that nonprofit programs focus mainly on courses about internal organization functions versus externally focused topics (e.g., international issues, relationships between the sectors). These efforts help to describe the curriculum of nonprofit management programs and may be thought of as an essential early step to the creation of a unique academic field. One of the goals of our student study is to add a student perspective to this discussion. The Building Bridges Initiative Survey of Nonprofit Management Students We surveyed students enrolled in six nonprofit management graduate and certificate programs at these BBI grantee institutions: Case Western Reserve University, George Mason University, Indiana University (IUPUI), Portland State University, SUNY-Albany, and Western Michigan University. Students enrolled in Spring/Fall 1999 and/or Spring 2000 nonprofit management courses at the six institutions were invited to complete the survey. We limited our study to students in graduate and certificate programs at these six institutions for several reasons. First, some of the BBI grantees were just starting to offer degree programs and did not have students enrolled in programs during Spring 1999. Second, we did not include undergraduate programs as our focus was on returning students, and because American Humanics, an undergraduate nonprofit management certification program, conducts its own evaluations. Third, we did not include The Learning Institute because of the unique nature of their program – distance learning. A separate study of their students is under discussion. Thus, the six institutions we chose offer the more traditional and/or established graduate degree and certificate programs found among the 19 BBI institutions. To maintain research integrity and preserve student confidentiality, a number of procedures were implemented. First, the survey instrument was reviewed and approved by the University Committee on Research Involving Human Subjects at Michigan State University (MSU). Respondents were provided a contact at MSU if they had any concerns or questions (none were received). Second, to meet confidentiality guidelines established at other universities, we sent participating institutions the surveys in sealed and stamped envelopes and the university then addressed and mailed them. A similar procedure was employed to send reminder postcards to students. The survey was conducted during Spring and Summer 2000 so that most respondents had at least one academic semester exposure to nonprofit management programs. We mailed 520 surveys, ten were undeliverable, and 256 useable surveys were returned to us for a response rate of 50%. Data were analyzed using SPSS. Percentages and means were calculated for each item on the survey. Spearman correlation was used to determine correlations significant at < .05 with a coefficient > .20. We designed the student survey to serve the cluster evaluation needs of the BBI and used prior research and studies in the construction of the instrument. Human capital theory offered insights into the economic issues associated with additional schooling and suggested questions about cost, access, reasons for further study, and perceptions about the comparative standing of nonprofit, government, and for-profit management programs. Young (1983) led us to consider the self-selection elements of nonprofit management and questions about students’ attraction to work in the sector. Wish and Mirabella (1998a and 1998b) provided insights into the program features that influence student decision-making and the Nonprofit Academic Centers Council's identification of core courses assisted us in identifying a set of core management competencies often associated with nonprofit management programs. The remainder of this paper presents the findings from this survey. Index TopProfile of StudentsWe begin our discussion of survey findings with a description of the respondents. While any academic program administrator can describe characteristics of the students attending his or her program, there is little, if any, demographic data of nonprofit management students aggregated across multiple institutions. Although these data are not representative of all nonprofit management students and, therefore, should not be generalized to all students, they present a snap shot of nonprofit management students not available elsewhere. We asked students their sex, age, race, educational background, and about their current and past employment and about their academic program. Our findings show the following:
Perhaps the characteristic that distinguishes this group of students is that they were working students – most were employed full-time and most were employed in the nonprofit sector. The students represented a wide range of educational backgrounds – most had bachelor degrees but these degrees were from a variety of disciplines and colleges. The students as a collective, perhaps more so than the academic programs, can be thought of as “interdisciplinary.” Our sample was somewhat racially diverse (16% are students of color), mostly female (80%), and varied in age. Data from the 1990 census (Independent Sector, 1993) shows nonprofit employment to be two thirds female/one third male and 15.2% minority. If these demographic patterns hold over the decade of the 1990s, our respondents reflected the diversity of the sector, but not its gender profile. In general, students enrolled in certificate programs tended to be older and students in the master's programs tended to be younger, though not to any level of statistical significance. Thus, we were likely to find older students enrolled in master’s programs and younger students in certificate programs. The same holds for sex and ethnicity/race. |
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