Torn between which Masters degree to pursue...

Graduate School
1

<p>Hello,</p>

<p>Some background on me. I am a senior BSBA student with a concentration in Human Resource Management. My degree will be AACSB accredited. I carry about a 3.3GPA and had a general management internship with the small business I currently work at as a sales representative. I am currently looking into the following programs:</p>

<p>Master of Public Health - Generalist - CEPH Accredited
Master of Health and Human Services
Master of Science in Education-Counseling - Clinical Mental Health Counseling - CACREP Accredited
Master of Business Administration - AACSB Accredited - Health Care Management certificate as well.</p>

<p>I am torn between these all because I really want to work in healthcare, but not as a nurse or someone clinical, but rather in the administration side or as an educator type, which the MPH would enable me to do. The MBA/MHHS would help me with the administration side, I think. And the MSC would enable me to do some sort of practice in counseling, and with my HR degree I have studied some basic psychology topics and think counseling could be a rewarding career. If anyone has any input or even a suggestion for a different type of degree, let me know :)</p>

<p>Thank you all in advance!</p>

2

<p>If you can’t decide, go work for a few years, and see what the people who do what you want to do have.</p>

<p>You can’t really get a generalist MPH by the way, not in most schools’ full time programs. You usually specialize in one of five areas: the social & behavioral sciences in public health; biostatistics; epidemiology; health policy and management; or environmental health sciences. At some schools you can specialize in health services research, which usually falls under HPM. Some schools also have other specializations, like global health, maternal and child health, and nutrition.</p>

<p>At some places you can get an MBA/MPH - Berkeley, UCLA, Yale, UVa, Boston U, Emory, Columbia, WUSTL, Michigan. There are probably others. Also, some schools (like Michigan and Columbia) have an MHA - the master’s of health administration.</p>

<p>Really, you can do administration in healthcare with either an MBA or an MPH (as long as the MPH’s concentration is in health policy & management or health administration). You could even do it with an MPA, although I think these days hospitals are run more like businesses. Where they will differ is what you learn. MPH degrees are public health degrees; you will take core courses in the theory of public health and learn about distribution of disease, social and behavioral determinants of disease, environmental factors in health, policy analysis, etc. Your concentration classes will teach you about health care financing, economics, and accounting - but they will all be focused on that in healthcare institutions.</p>

<p>An MBA is more of a generalist’s degree and you will learn about general business practices and theory. If you go to a program with a healthcare concentration you will learn specific practices (accounting, finance, marketing, etc.) related to healthcare, but you’ll still have to take core courses in general business. So the question is about what do you really want to learn? If you are interested in a hybrid of healthcare admin and education, the MPH may interest you more since if you take certain classes you can get certified as a health education specialist (CHES).</p>

<p>If you are interested in both counseling AND healthcare administration, consider a dual MSW/MPH (with a concentration in clinical social work for the MSW and healthcare policy & administration for the MPH) or MSW/MBA (clinical social work and healthcare admin). There are lots of MSW/MPH programs; I’m not aware of too many MSW/MBA programs, but there may be some out there. There may also be some MSW/MPA programs.</p>

3

<p>Hello,</p>

<p>Thanks for the response. The program I am looking into specifies their degree as a general MPH. Also, multiple degrees on the CEPH website are cited as being “generalist” degrees. </p>

<p>This is the program I am looking into: [The</a> Consortium of Eastern Ohio Master of Public Health (CEOMPH)](<a href=“http://www3.neomed.edu/MPH/]The”>http://www3.neomed.edu/MPH/)</p>

<p>I am more interested in researching diseases, but not as a clinician. Epidemiology interests me and health education does too. I figured with my BSBA background (HRM) I would not be able to do epidemiology or health education as my background isn’t in biology or public health as an undergraduate student. Business bores me, but healthcare is fascinating to me, so I am attempting to sort of “marry” the two, if that makes sense.</p>