Master of Public Administration Rises in U.S. News Rankings
Friday, March 20, 2020
Seton Hall's online M.P.A. program in nonprofit management is currently ranked ahead of many much larger and prestigious universities including the University of Texas-Austin, Duke University, Columbia and the University of Michigan. M.P.A. director Matthew Hale, Ph.D., was thrilled with the new ranking, saying, "We are encouraged to see our ranking improve from last year. We think that it shows that Seton Hall is a nationally and internationally important program, that we really are one of the leaders in public service and nonprofit education."
Here are some additional statistics about the nonprofit management rankings and where Seton Hall falls within them:
- Seton Hall is the smallest university on the list. After Seton Hall, American University (with about 13,000 total students) is the only other relatively small liberal arts university. The remaining institutions, with the exception of the University of Colorado at Denver (with 18,000 students), enroll at least double the number of total students that Seton Hall enrolls.
- Just under 80 percent of the institutions on the nonprofit list are large public universities such as Indiana University at Bloomington and the University of Washington.
- About 70% of the institutions listed are not programs or even departments, but full service schools.
- Seven of the institutions on the list (Arizona State University, the University of Central Florida, Ohio State University, Texas A&M University, the University of Minnesota, Georgia State University, and Indiana University) are in the top ten in terms of total size, each with enrollments of approximately 50,000 students. By comparison, Seton Hall has a total enrollment of just over 10,000.
Over the past four years, the M.P.A. program has been working to find new ways to make improvements and grow. In addition to offering the M.P.A. degree with a Nonprofit Management Concentration entirely online using an eight-week cohort model, these new initiatives have also included:
- Revamping courses to reflect the growth of nonprofit management within the larger field of public affairs. For example, the faculty recently added innovative courses in Cross-Sector Collaboration and Cooperation, Nonprofits & Public Policy, Nonprofit Advocacy and Lobbying and Ethical Challenges of Big Data to the M.P.A. course offerings. These courses help students identify and solve the most pressing social problems of the day, whether they ultimately work on the public, nonprofit or even private sectors.
- Creating an M.P.A. concentration in Data Visualization and Analytics, a collaboration between the M.P.A. and the Math, Psychology and Computer Science Departments.
- Expanding the "3/2" M.P.A. programs to allow top-flight undergraduates to receive both a B.A. and an M.P.A. degree in five years. In addition, the program is expanding the number of undergraduate majors that are eligible for our 3/2 program. There are currently 3/2 programs with political science, sociology and religious studies, and shortly there will also be programs available for Africana studies, Catholic studies, social and behavioral sciences and biology undergraduates. The 3/2 programs allow highly qualified undergraduates to start taking M.P.A. graduate courses during their senior year and, as a result, students can graduate with two degrees (a B.A. and an M.P.A.) in five years.
"This ranking speaks to our national reputation and strength in nonprofit management, which is really great. But we are always looking for ways of expanding and improving all our offerings for students and working to stay on the cutting edge of public and nonprofit management administration," says Hale.
The M.P.A. program is currently accepting applications for the Fall 2020 semester. More information about the program and its scholarships can be found More information about the program and its scholarships can be found here »
Categories: Nation and World
