The second part is a follow-up of these students as alumni. This study presents a demand side perspective to complement our greater understanding of the supply side of nonprofit management education. The nonprofit management student population revealed by the survey is primarily female and white, but they come from a range of ages. The human capital framework allows us to structure our analysis in terms of the investments made by students to achieve further education. Accordingly, we found that students seek to continue their education primarily for personal development and skill enhancement, although they do consider the financial benefits too.
Locality is also important most students are working and studying at the same time.
We believe that most students are seeking a program with a strong reputation and a focus on the nonprofit sector that is accessible in terms of location and class times. Students are primarily interested in topics that focus on the internal and unique operations of nonprofit organizations. Differences do emerge among the respondents regarding the importance of courses and factors that influence their choice of program or decision to return to school, but few of these differences are statistically or substantively significant. The lack of differences is, in some ways, a surprising finding. And we certainly anticipated finding differences between students enrolled in certificate program, nonprofit management master s, and master s with a nonprofit concentration.