Graduation Trends in Public Health Over the Past Two Decades

Relatively little information exists on how many masters and doctoral students graduate each year with public health degrees from public health programs, in contrast to more robust information on how many students are graduating from schools of public health. Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics, we extracted records from each institution reporting they had conferred masters or doctoral degrees in public health for 1992-2012. We integrated these data with detailed self-reported historical records from the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH) school of public health members on degree conferrals. We compared and contrasted estimates from ASPPH members that also reported to NCES and created a composite estimate (taking the greater of NCES or ASPPH reports) to get an upper-bound estimate on the expected number of graduate degree conferrals nationally.

In 1992, ASPPH member schools graduated 3,845 students in public health, with an additional 636 conferrals coming from non-members. In 2012, ASPPH members reported conferring 9,434 graduate degrees in public health, with an additional 6,115 coming from non-members. This demonstrates a dramatic increase in the number of students graduating with degrees in public health. We also report conferrals by accreditation status, program type, gender, race/ethnicity, and degree type.

With almost 15,500 graduate public health degrees conferred in 2012, the need to understand where alumni are employed is needed. Further research is needed to identify to what extent graduates are electing to enter the governmental public health workforce, versus seeking employment in other sectors.