The Dynamics of NASPAA Accreditation: A Challenge for Organizational Expansion?

Abstract

For many years, graduate programs have sought to improve the standards within their departments. In many cases, national and regional organizations have been set up to regulate and ensure that these standards are met. In the case of graduate education in public affairs and administration, the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA) is the regulatory body. This study uses NASPAA data and a mail survey to examine what factors determine whether institutional members of NASPAA are accredited. NASPAA grew rapidly in the 1970s and moved quite smoothly to a formal accreditation process during the 1980s.Yet the growth of institutional members has been fairly slow since 1980; and, at present, more than 40 percent of the institutional members are not accredited. Our data indicate that faculty size, institutional autonomy, and program emphasis all exert significant influences on the likelihood that a program is accredited.This suggests targets of opportunity for efforts to increase the accreditation rate of NASPAA’s institutional members.