The "Best Place" Debate: A Comparison of Graduate Education Programs for Nonprofit Managers

An enduring debate has been taking place among faculty teaching in professional degree programs on the best place to educate managers of nonprofit organizations. Should nonprofit management degrees be full programs offered in a business school setting, a public administration school setting, or in social work schools? Or would degree programs produce more effective managers if they were offered as concentrations within the typical master of business administration (MBA) program, master of public administration (MPA) program, or master of social work (MSW) program? Beginning with the Nonprofit Management Education Conference in San Francisco in 1986, educators have discussed which setting is most favorable for students of nonprofit management (O'Neill and Young 1988). At the conference, Cyert (1988) argued in favor of housing nonprofit programs in schools of public policy or administration, while Keane and Merget (1988) presented an interdisciplinary model like the one developed at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. More recently, at the 1996 conference in Berkeley, Salamon (1999) maintained that nonprofit and public managers should be educated together, not apart, to prepare students for careers as "professional citizens." At the same conference, Hall (1996) argued similarly and cautioned against isolating nonprofit management programs from the "mainstream of scholarship and management training efforts." At present, there are 83 graduate programs specifically focused on educating future leaders of nonprofit organizations (Wish and Mirabella 1998). To help resolve the "best place debate," the authors have collected and analyzed both descriptive course data and attitudinal data from a subset of these programs and others that shed light on this discussion. They look at how curricular elements of programs with nonprofit concentrations differ among themselves and compare these with generic management degree programs found in schools of business, public administration, and social work. Is one setting more favorable for students of nonprofit management? Does the curriculum differ by degree? This paper examines these questions, concluding with a discussion of the implications of these findings for the future of nonprofit management education, in the United States. The "Best Place" Debate: Background In 1988, Young suggested that developing research and education programs on the nonprofit sector is a "tricky business" because the subject cannot be confined to an existing academic discipline. Indeed, since they draw on economics, sociology, history, political science and the law, nonprofit management research and education cross existing academic boundaries. As a result, universities face great difficulties in deciding if and how to integrate nonprofit educational offerings into existing curriculum. In this section, we briefly explore the advantages and disadvantages of educating nonprofit managers in various institutional settings, including social work schools, business schools, public administration schools, and other university settings outlined in the scholarly literature. Social Work Setting In tracing the historical development of the nonprofit discipline, Young (1988) points out that social work schools claim "historical jurisdiction" over the field because of their connection to programs for nonprofit organizations. The nonprofit management field owes a great debt to the social work profession that nurtured it for so many years while other professionals ignored it. Many advantages of educating nonprofit managers in the social work setting have been cited. Young (1988, 36) suggests that social work (social service administration) programs bring "charitable and philanthropic traditions to the table." Likewise, Reid and Peebles-Wilkins (1991, 213) maintain that "social work is an idea driven by values and social aesthetics as opposed to a practice technology driven by clinical findings of effectiveness and efficiency. …