ANN ARBOR—The University of Michigan will begin offering a master’s concentration in philanthropy, advancement and development for students studying higher education beginning in the fall of 2009.

“This new concentration area will complement well our current graduate program offerings in higher education. I am pleased that we are able to expand our programs to offer future higher education leaders and practitioners an option in the area of philanthropy and advancement,” said Deborah Carter, director of the nationally recognized Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education in the School of Education.

The 30-credit graduate program is focused on developing leadership skills related to a wide range of emerging professional opportunities including government relations, marketing, communications, alumni relations, fundraising and development as well as institutional, corporate and foundation relations.

“This is the most quickly expanding professional area in higher education and the University is already known as a leader in this field,” said John Burkhardt, a U-M clinical professor of higher education. “We are combining the strengths of the nation’s leading higher ed program with those of the historical leader in philanthropy among public universities.”

As state government support for higher education has dropped with accelerated cuts since 2002, colleges and universities have continually expanded their efforts to seek private support, creating a growing need for development specialists at all levels, said Jerry May, U-M vice president for development.

“People who earn this new degree could become gift officers on the front line or they could use these skills to run an entire program,” May said. “I think they could do anything they want to do.”

To help meet a growing need for advancement professionals, development staffers and School of Education faculty last year began a development internship program for U-M undergraduates, hiring 17 interns in summer of 2007 and 20 in the summer of 2008. This new master’s degree program would be the next step in the University’s efforts to expand the profession of fundraising.

The Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) serves 60,000 advancement professionals at nearly 3,400 higher and secondary education institutions in 61 countries. This year’s CASE Fundraising Index predicted that annual giving to education will grow by 5.3 percent in the 2008-2009 academic year during a sluggish economy, down from the average of 7 percent annual growth over the past 20 years.

U-M was the first known public university to establish a permanent fundraising unit, launch a modern capital campaign in the 1960s and have a goal of $1 billion for a campaign. The ongoing Michigan Difference campaign was launched with the goal of raising more than $2.5 billion, which it surpassed before the close of the campaign.

U-M’s development staff, spread throughout the University and its 19 colleges and other units, includes fundraisers and others in supporting roles such as processing gifts, research, communications and management, May said, adding that the demand for development people is growing nationwide. The success of Michigan’s development program combined with the fact that the School of Education is home to the nation’s top-ranked graduate program in higher education, makes this an ideal campus to launch a professional master’s program focused on the practice of higher education fundraising.

While Indiana University and Vanderbilt University offer philanthropy programs, the U-M degree would be the first focused on higher education philanthropy, he said.

Burkhardt, a former program director for leadership and higher education for the Battle Creek-based W.K. Kellogg Foundation, one of the nation’s largest foundations, is director of the National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good within the School of Education.

Chief development officers now typically serve in presidential cabinets and the role has increasingly offered a pathway toward becoming a college or university president, since fundraising and other advancement duties have become increasingly important for presidents, deans and other top administrators, Burkhardt said.

“Fundraising is more than a set of techniques,” he said. “Our higher education alumni have traditionally moved quickly into positions of leadership because of their fundamental understanding of higher education institutions as complex organizations and their ability to situate the university as a social institution of compelling importance. Graduates of this new program will have a depth of knowledge unmatched by any others.”

Development has grown as a field of academic study with the need for scholarly research on the motivation of donors, including attitudes about giving and the effectiveness of advancement efforts, he said.

For more on Burkhardt, visit: http://sitemaker.soe.umich.edu/soe/faculty&mode=single&recordID=50730&nextMode=list

For more on U-M’s Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, visit: http://www.soe.umich.edu/cshpe/

For more on the U-M School of Education, visit: http://www.soe.umich.edu/

For more on U-M philanthropy efforts, visit: http://www.giving.umich.edu/