With increased opportunities in the health services industry, colleges and universities across the nation are finding that students are flooding to major in these fields, and by 2014, the U.S. Bureau of Labor estimates that the healthcare industry will have grown 27 percent, almost twice as much as the predicted growth of all other industries.
“It’s the major that has grown the fastest in the history of this university” said William Cullinan, associate chairman of the department of biomedical sciences at Marquette, in Milwaukee. “It’s unbelievable how much its exploded in popularity.”
Colleges, including Boston University, offer specialized health studies that enable students to jump into careers that are high in demand and pay, including nursing, medical assisting, education and dental hygienists.
Schools such as the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester have seen a rise in the number of student applying to the school, with the class of 2009 seeing 795 applicants, an increase of 44 percent over the class of 2006, according to university representatives.
Harvard Medical School has also seen an 8 percent increase in applicants since 2001 said Harvard officials.
According to Dr. Eileen O’Keefe, director of the Health Science Program at Sargent College, more people are staying away from the “traditional” path of studying pre-medicine, applying to medical school and entering residency at a hospital.
“The training has changed. Medical Students are not starting at age 18 and ending at age 22. All medical training takes place at a graduate level,” she said.
And now, the majority of health science majors are not headed to medical school.
The BU Health Science Program began accepting transfer students in the fall of 2004, and the program now has 82 students, making it one of the fastest growing programs at BU.
Although some of the newly sparked healthcare interest began after the apparent nursing shortage in Massachusetts, the trend is not entirely local. According to university officials across the country, “health sciences” is one of the fastest-growing majors in the nation.
“Twenty years ago the health industry did not have as many opportunities as we do today,” O’Keefe said, adding that one of the programs unique to Sargent is the five-year accelerated program offering a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Public Health.
The students began enrolling in health services programs after they recognized its increased opportunities, said O’Keefe, adding that students “get a balanced education with pre-requisites and Liberal Arts courses.”
UMass-Boston spokesman Ed Hayward said Boston is a prime place to work in the healthcare industry because of all the opportunities in the area.
“The growth has been fueled by the general shift to service industries taking place in Massachusetts, driven by the region’s world-class medical, health and research institutions,” he said.
And O’Keefe said that a Health Services degree gives undergraduates chance to get a job directly after college as well as the prospect of attending graduate school.
“The degrees have moved to the graduate level, so undergraduates need something to fill their classes,” said O’Keefe, adding that, with all due respect to student on the pre-med track in the College of Arts and Sciences, “Sargent is the College on the Charles that really prepares for the graduate school in healthcare.”