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Student-Retention and Career-Placement Rates Between Bachelor's and Master's Degree Professional Athletic Training
Thomas G Bowman1, Stephanie M Mazerolle2, William A Pitney3
1Department of Athletic Training, Lynchburg College, VA.
Context:
The debate over what the entry-level degree should be for athletic training has heightened. A comparison of retention and career-placement rates between bachelor's and master's degree professional athletic training programs may inform the debate.
Objective:
To compare the retention rates and career-placement rates of students in bachelor's and master's degree professional programs.
Design:
Cross-sectional study.
Setting:
Web-based survey.
Patients Or Other Participants:
A total of 192 program directors (PDs) from bachelor's degree (n = 177) and master's degree (n = 15) professional programs.
Intervention(S):
The PDs completed a Web-based survey.
Main Outcome Measure(S):
We instructed the PDs to provide a retention rate and career-placement rate for the students in the programs they lead for each of the past 5 years. We also asked the PDs if they thought retention of students was a problem currently facing athletic training education. We used independent t tests to compare the responses between bachelor's and master's degree professional programs.
Results:
We found a higher retention rate for professional master's degree students (88.70% ± 9.02%, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 83.71, 93.69) than bachelor's degree students (80.98% ± 17.86%, 95% CI = 78.30, 83.66) (t25 = -2.86, P = .008, d = 0.55). Similarly, PDs from professional master's degree programs reported higher career-placement percentages (88.50% ± 10.68%, 95% CI = 82.33, 94.67) than bachelor's degree professional PDs (71.32% ± 18.47%, 95% CI = 68.54, 74.10) (t20 = -5.40, P < .001, d = 1.14). Finally, we observed no difference between groups regarding whether retention is a problem facing athletic training (χ(2)1 = 0.720, P = .40, Φ = .061).
Conclusions:
Professional master's degree education appears to facilitate higher retention rates and greater career-placement rates in athletic training than bachelor's degree education. Professional socialization, program selectivity, and student commitment and motivation levels may help to explain the differences noted.
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