Abstract
As the public sectors of many countries come to terms with the implications of major challenges, from reduced budgets and changes in the nature of public-sector employment, it is appropriate to reflect on the nature of nonprofit education and consider it in the context of management and business education in the public and private sectors. Until now, published research on nonprofit programmes in higher education has typically been focused on individual countries or types of programmes. Th is paper reviews the background of management education and compares university-level nonprofit education in the United Kingdom, Spain and the United States. We find that the number and types of academic programmes offered are aligned with both the size of the sector and the sector function in each country.