Job Market Is Healthier for MHAs--Study

A new national study has found that the job market for graduates of master’s level health administration programs grew stronger between 1979 and 1983, with entry-level salaries rising 41% during the period.

Though students earning a master’s in health administration (MHA) in 1983 had incurred an average education-related indebtedness of more than $8,500, they generally fared better in the job market than graduates of other master’s programs because of continued growth of for-profit health-care companies, according to a survey conducted by Korn/Ferry International, a leading executive search firm based in New York, and the Arlington, Va.-based Assn. of University Programs in Health Administration.

The study queried 900 of the nation’s 1,214 graduates of MHA programs in 1983 and found that 91% had found jobs after six months, compared to 85% in 1979. The average graduate in 1983 had nearly six interviews and two job offers. The length of the average job search was a little more than 100 days, and the student earned $27,180 in the first year on the job, up from $19,230 for 1979 graduates.

Although Korn/Ferry has not compiled data since 1983, the employment outlook has gotten even stronger, experts say.

“Locally, it’s never been better,” said Dennis Pointer, director of UCLA’s program in health-care management.

“If there’s been any change since then, it’s been for the better,” added Paul A. Gross, a vice president at Humana, who heads the health-care conglomerate’s hospital division.

Gross said Humana, which owns about 90 hospitals, plans to increase its hiring of MHA graduates this year because of the company’s strong growth. And one California university said starting salaries for its June, 1985, MHA graduates range from $25,000 to $55,000.

Such graduates, however, are finding that the road to the top is a longer one. Increasingly, they are being hired at lower management levels to oversee hospital jobs in sales, marketing and personnel, experts say. However, becoming hospital administrator--a prestigious post similar to that of vice president in business--remains the ultimate career goal for many job seekers.

Along with insurance, banking and high technology, the $400-billion-a-year health-care industry has long been considered fertile ground for skilled job seekers.

Health-services administrators held about 303,000 jobs in 1982, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which forecasts that “employment of health-services administrators is expected to grow faster than the average for all occupations through the mid-1990s.”

But, as rosy as that employment outlook may seem, MHA graduates are facing stiffer competition from the more than 60,000 MBAs who flood the job market each year.

“The big health-care organizations are increasingly looking to business schools (to fill jobs) in those areas where it is not important to have skills in health care,” said Anthony R. Kovner, a professor at New York University and director of NYU’s Program in Health Policy Management. But Kovner added that he still thinks that “health-administration education is a good investment, especially when compared to the average (educational) debt incurred in other professions.”