Private Choice and Public Policy in Nonprofit Education

As several other volumes in this series on nonprofit organizations help us appreciate the importance of the private nonprofit sector in U.S. society, economics, and politics, we surely must recognize the weight of education within that sector. Quantitative profiles of the nonprofit sector are still sketchy, but the best figures show that education is one of the big four arenas of nonprofit activity, along with health, social services, and religious organizations, and perhaps (with health) even one of the big two. Data on salaried employees are illustrative. Private education’s total of more than one million puts it second behind health within a nonprofit sector that accounts for 8% (and growing) of these employees. And yet, even such figures give very conservative estimates of the significance of the nonprofit sector generally, and education in particular. For one thing, institutions such as private schools often rely heavily on voluntary work. More important, these institutions obviously serve many millions more than they employ. Turning to education alone, enrollment figures give an idea of the private nonprofit sector’s size. (By “schools” we will mean primary and secondary schools; see note 11.) As Erickson’s chapter reports, private schools hold at least 10% of total school enrollments, their more than five million students spread out over roughly 18% of the total system’s schools. And Geiger’s chapter reports that the private share is even more impressive at the higher-education level. There, the more than two million private students account for roughly 22% of total enrollments, distributed over roughly half the system’s institutions. Yet most observers of private education, including the two just cited, would argue that such numbers understate its significance. This significance derives from offering something different from the public sector, something often thought superior and influential, but something at least desired and supported by a substantial number of actors. In any case, behind such figures lies an intricate maze of private choices, made by students, their families, and others, as well as an intricate maze of public policies, at once responding to and shaping those private choices.