Characterizing the growth of the undergraduate public health major, 1992-2012

In recent years, interest in undergraduate public health education has grown dramatically. However, little is known about how many public health undergraduate degrees are conferred in the United States.

Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), we identified undergraduate degree conferrals in Public Health and extracted those records from NCES’ census of all degree conferrals in the United States for 1992 through 2012. Twenty-one individual datasets were cleaned, combined, and processed to create conferral estimates by institution, degree type, program area, gender, and race/ethnicity.

In 2012, approximately 6,500 students graduated with a public health undergraduate degree. NCES data suggest a significant increase in undergraduate conferrals beginning around 2005.  The majority of students graduated in programs in Public Health Education/Behavioral Sciences (27%) and Public Health-General (25%) during 1992-2012. In 1992, 45 schools conferred undergraduate degrees in Public Health with 17 degree conferrals per institution on average (median 15, max 63). In 2012, 176 schools reported conferring undergraduate public health degrees with an average classes size of 37 (median 19, max 341). Only 120 schools graduated more than 10 students in 2012 (28 schools in 1992).  This suggests a small number of schools account for most of the degrees conferred nationally.

Thousands of students are graduating annually with public health undergraduate degrees, but little information exists on what skills they have when they do graduate and where they end up. Further research is needed both into the quality/comparability of new public health undergraduate degrees, and on alumni themselves.