A worthy investment? Investigating alumni perceptions of nonprofit degrees

Abstract

As students invest in higher education, an assumption of value creation emerges as training and education are expected to yield career and compensation outcomes. Given the growth of nonprofit management education, we see merit in investigating how alumni perceive their degree in terms of the return on their investment of money and time. This study relies on survey data collected from the (project name redacted for anonymity), and joins the Project’s previous findings to elucidate how nonprofit management education is shaping the nonprofit sector’s workforce. Our findings highlight how nonprofit sector commitment, but not work in the sector, influences how graduate alumni view their degree, and that those carrying a higher financial burden from their degree view their degree less favorably. These findings inform administrators of nonprofit degree programs about how students perceive the value of their education and how that perception impacts nonprofit management education as a pipeline for the nonprofit workforce.