Score a Career Switch to Health Care From a Liberal Arts Background

John Derksen majored in political science. But interning at the National Institutes of Health and working for a nonprofit coordinating patient care for immigrants altered his path.

The 26-year-old Orrville, Ohio, native is now in a three-year master's program in health care administration at the University of Alabama--Birmingham.

"I had no science background whatsoever, but getting this degree looked like a great opportunity," says Derksen, who will wrap up his studies with a yearlong fellowship at a hospital chain in Louisiana, where he will be partnered with a top executive. He believes the extra diploma will give him a leg up in a field with great potential.

Job openings for health care managers are anticipated to swell by 17 percent in the decade ending in 2024, according to government projections. That's much faster than the average for all occupations. All told, the health care field is expected to account for about 1 in 4 new jobs over that period.

A wide range of health care arenas will be adding new positions that liberal arts majors can qualify for after getting an advanced degree. They range from social work and mental health counseling to public health, regulatory compliance and policy analysis.

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"A lot of health systems have huge marketing divisions and are looking for people who can write and communicate, which are tasks humanities grads can handle," says Richard Oliver, immediate past president of the Association of Schools of Allied Health Professions and former dean of the school of health professions at the University of Missouri in Columbia. "Health or strategic communications are also hot areas."

Besides hospital and other clinical practice settings, work can be found in academia, think tanks, governmental agencies and large health care corporations. And people who either have had or are game to take some science prerequisites can opt for "entry-level" master's programs to become a registered nurse or speech therapist, for instance.

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At Alabama, students in the health care administration master's program "run the gamut from English, economics and business to engineering backgrounds," says program director Amy Yarbrough Landry, who is also an associate professor of health services administration.

There is a second "low-residency" track for professionals with at least five years of health care experience that entails mostly online coursework and one week on campus each semester. Graduates work in middle to upper management in a broad range of organizations, including hospitals, physician group practices, insurance companies and consulting firms.

For Kaylan Agnew, 26, the shift has been from a college major in sociocultural anthropology to a career in global health. Stints during college volunteering in Kenya with botanists studying medicinal plants, doing research at a Palestinian refugee clinic and working on a water project in Sierra Leone "made me realize how much anthropology and culture play a role in health," says Agnew.

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Last fall, she started the master's program in global health at the University of California--San Francisco. It's a degree that "will give me a lot of latitude," she thinks. For example, public health pros are needed in hospitals, community clinics, government agencies and nonprofits; median salaries are often in the $60,000 range.

While applicants are best served by having a solid math background and a statistics course as well as some health-related science such as nutrition or anatomy, "these can be done in a summer or a semester," says Madhavi Dandu, director of the program. "We have students with all kinds of undergraduate degrees, like anthropology and sociology. We've even had geographers and journalists."

A good way to find out about programs open to liberal arts majors is to search for schools of health sciences or health professions and look at admissions requirements for programs of interest.

And "contact the program's director," advises Edelma Huntley, dean in residence at the Council of Graduate Schools. "They can tell you if you qualify, or if you need to take some prerequisite classes, and they can give you a realistic assessment of your chances for success if you matriculate."

Most occupations have national organizations -- the American Occupational Therapy Association and the American Nurses Association, for example -- that can provide information on the best places to get an advanced degree. They can also refer people interested in a career such as nursing or speech-language pathology to fast-track programs for liberal arts grads motivated to take some science prerequisites.

The take-home message? There are many entryways to health care open even to people who struggled with high school chemistry.

This story is excerpted from the U.S. News "Best Graduate Schools 2017" guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings and data.