Where Healthcare Administration Programs Are Is Not Where the Jobs Are

There is an obvious question behind every list of healthcare administration programs by state, and the federal files can answer it: how many graduates does a state produce against how many people already do the work there. Put 12,549 degrees a year next to 597,070 working medical and health services managers and the national answer is 2.1 degrees for every 100 jobs.

By state the same ratio runs from 0 to 16.8. That looks like a map of where this degree is oversupplied and where it is scarce. It is worth about ten minutes of belief.

The Top of the Table Is a Handful of Online Universities

Utah produces 16.8 degrees a year for every 100 jobs in the state, 8 times the national rate. Western Governors accounts for 765 of its 815, and enrolls nationally. The pattern holds down the list: the states that look like they are flooding the market are the states where a large online university is incorporated.

The second-to-last column is the whole argument. Utah reaches 16.8 per 100 jobs on all programs and 0 on the ones taught on a campus.

On Campus, the Map Is Almost Flat

Counting only programs that teach in person, the highest rate in the country is District of Columbia at 2.9 degrees per 100 jobs. The range falls from 16.8 to 2.9, and most of what looked like a geography of this degree falls with it.

The reason is in how the two files are built. IPEDS attributes a program to the address of the institution that reports it, and the federal wage file counts jobs where the work is done. For a campus program those are usually the same place, or near enough that the comparison means something. For an online university they are unrelated: students enroll from every state and graduates go to work in every state, while all of the completions land on one line of the table.

Training More Does Not Mean Earning Less

The intuitive next step is that states producing a lot of graduates pay less for them. The numbers decline to cooperate. Splitting the 50 states and the District of Columbia into thirds by how much they train per job, the median wage in each third lands within $11,960 of the others, and not in the order the idea predicts.

Pay in this field tracks the cost and concentration of the places doing the hiring rather than the local supply of graduates. New York pays a median of $164,120 and Arkansas $94,340, a gap of $69,780, and the salary page sets out every state against the national median of $123,860.

Job Markets With No Ranked Program

Arkansas employs 6,440 and Hawaii employs 2,650, numbers comparable to states carrying a dozen programs, and neither carries a bachelor’s program in the ranked set. Students there study online or out of state, which is the other half of why a state’s program count is a poor guide to its workforce.

What to Do With This

If you are choosing an on-campus program, the state matters and it matters in ways the ratio above does not capture: placements, the health systems that recruit from the department, and the faculty who work in them. Those are reasons to study where you want to live, and they are stronger reasons than any supply figure.

If you are choosing an online program, the state on the diploma is a mailing address. A list of healthcare administration programs by state tells you where each university files its paperwork and nothing about where its graduates work. Spend the attention you would have given to geography on the things that do move: what the program costs, whether its students finish, and how it compares on the ranking.