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ABSTRACT
Given increasingly crowded education marketplaces, an emerging perspective views education as a marketable product and seeks to explain what drives loyalty of alumni. Satisfaction has been used as an indicator of education quality and resides in a complex relationship of factors pertaining to students and institutions. The nonprofit graduate education marketplace has a competitive field of offerings, and this study engages alumni from three programs to help make sense of the value alumni attach to their degree. The findings confirm a nuanced relationship between alumni satisfaction of university and program reputation and competencies derived from the degree. The analysis draws insights for nonprofit graduate education program administrators and points to directions for future research.
Notes
1. Precisely identifying the percentage of nonprofit graduate programs covered by NASPAA is complicated given their varied institutional homes. For example, Mirabella et al. (Citation2019) differentiate among eight different programmatic locations including business and public administration, public affairs and administration, graduate or professional schools, and arts and sciences.
2. An in-depth review is beyond this paper’s intentions, so we direct to Schlesinger et al. (Citation2017), which provides a summary table of recent literature on education loyalty.
3. Baruch et al. (Citation2005) have established a three-dimensional structure of a slightly different version of the items we utilized. Attempts to map the item version we used to their typology failed, as four of our items did not match the categories they identified in their analysis, thus, necessitating EFA and CFA.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Amanda Stewart
Amanda Stewart is an Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University in the School of Public and International Affairs, Department of Public Administration. Her research centers on nonprofit organizations, including leadership continuity, career development, and organizational capacity. Amanda received her PhD in publication administration from American University.
Marlene Walk
Marlene Walk is an Assistant Professor at the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IUPUI. Her research interests are human resource management, volunteering and volunteer management as well as the impact of organizational change on employees. Marlene received her PhD from the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.
Kerry Kuenzi
Kerry Kuenzi is an Assistant Professor the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. She researches and publishes on public and nonprofit management topics including nonprofit executive careers, public and nonprofit education, and collaboration and networks. Kerry has her PhD in public affairs from the University of Colorado, Denver.