Regional Public Universities and Public Health Graduates

Posted on December 10, 2024 by Hunter Doyle

This entry is part 50 of 60 in the series Wide World of Public Health Systems

When thinking about graduation trends, there is a lot of focus on big schools and population centers since many grads come from relatively few schools. There has long been recognition that capturing rural and regional universities is important in understanding the makeup of colleges in the US. A list of Regional Public Universities (RPUs) was recently created by the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges (AARC), with the aim of creating an official list to study who is served by these institutions. A list of Regional Public Universities (RPUs) was recently created by the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges (AARC), with the aim of creating an official list to study who is served by these institutions.

This report mentions 474 RPUs were found and that they cover almost half of US students attending public four-year universities. The authors also created a dashboard to map these schools by highest degree awarded, undergraduate/graduate enrollment, and student demographics. This is an important tool, as RPUs serve a high number of students of color and Pell Grant recipients.

Here at the University of Minnesota – Center for Public Health Systems, we host a few dashboards related to public health graduates. We added an RPU filter into our Map of US Public Health Programs to further visualize these institutions and where they are located.

We also wanted to take a deeper dive into the linear trends of RPUs. After merging the degree conferral data with the ARRC RPU data file based on institution, some trends become fairly obvious – RPU schools and programs of public health are not growing at the same rate as non-RPU schools at the graduate level. Even with fewer institutions in the category, non-RPUs are above RPUs in terms of public health degrees conferred. There was a 12-year period when more public health bachelor’s degrees were coming from RPUs. Non-RPUs swapped as the majority in 2004, while the other degree levels have been separated the entire data collection period. This is due to non-RPUs having a higher average conferral size per institution and there being an overall higher number of institutions in the non-RPU classification. Proportionally, RPUs conferred 21.7% public health degrees in 1992, compared to 24.4% in 2023. These totals are much lower than the ARRC estimates.

While RPUs play a critical role in serving diverse and underserved student populations, it is clear that public health programs at these institutions may not exist or are not expanding at the same rate as those at non-RPUs. This highlights an area for future focus and support in addressing disparities in higher education.

About the Author

Hunter Doyle: Hunter Doyle, MPH, is a researcher whose interests include data management and quantitative analysis for the UMN Center for Public Health Systems. He has experience in analytics with federal claims through past work with quality improvement in healthcare facilities. He holds an undergraduate degree from Utah State University in Health Education and an MPH in Epidemiology from the University of Pittsburgh.