<p>I'm a senior and I haven't even started the college process yet. But I know what I to do and that's dental hygeine (no I don't wanna become a dentist). But there are only a few schools on the the east coast that will accept me if I get my Bachelors but with the Associates there are more schools in my area. I don't really know the pros and cons and I'm really distraught on this choice because time is against me. HELP!!!!!!!</p>
It would be better if you contact a counselor as they would be easily guiding you for a better future.
You mean the pros and cons of becoming a dental hygienist, or the pros and cons of an associate’s vs. a bachelor’s?
I’m not completely sure about dental hygiene, but one trend I have seen in allied health fields is an increase in the amount of education one needs to be competitive on the job market - or even get licensed. Some years ago, you could be a pharmacist with a bachelor’s degree, a physical therapist with a master’s degree, and a nurse with an RN or LPN from a two-year program or diploma program from a hospital. These days, you need a PharmD to be a pharmacist, a doctoral degree to be a physical therapist, and most hospitals want RNs with a bachelor’s degree. If that trend extends to dentistry, then I wouldn’t be surprised if associate’s-educated dental hygienists had a hard time getting employment in 5-10 years, and if BS-level dental hygienists had the advantage.
A BS also gives you more flexibility if you want to leave the field to do something else (like maybe consult for an insurance company or work for a public dental health nonprofit), teach, or continue your education (maybe you decide that you want to go to dental school yourself!).
However, I think that if there are very few BS schools that offer the major (and the Bureau of Labor Statistics agrees with you), that’s a good sign that the AS is all that’s necessary to do the job and that BS degrees in the field are not common yet. So you could probably do an associate’s degree and then find employment. You could always finish your bachelor’s part-time if you wanted to do that while you were working.
You could also potentially get an AS in dental hygiene, and then either transfer to a school that offers the BS in dental hygiene and finish your BS there, OR transfer to another school that offers a BS and will take your transfer credits, and then major in something else, like biology or chemistry.