New BS in Public Health

[sanantone]

WGU is hiring course developers and testers for a BS in Public Health program. In my opinion, they should have skipped directly to the MPH. There's not much that can be done with a BS, and people usually transition into this field with experience in healthcare or science. They also should have created a BSW, MSW, or master's in mental health counseling instead of undergraduate degrees in psychology and health and human services. With them already being an education-focused university, school counseling and school psychology certification/license-eligible programs would have made sense. 

WGU's mission was to offer practical degrees that lead to jobs, and I don't think their latest health-related programs align with that mission.

This was exactly my critique of WGU's new psychology degree. As an alum, I was surprised because it doesn't line up with their mission statement. Everyone knows psychology degrees have a poor return on time/money investment. But after thinking about it a bit, I realized they were probably going to be developing some kind of graduate program to make the psychology degree worth the time and effort. I'm sure they have something interesting in the works.

I hope so. Otherwise, they'll be just like every other online school that focuses on offering popular degrees instead of degrees that can actually get people jobs. Not that I'm saying that you can't get a job with a BS in psychology; it's just a lot harder, and the average pay is low.