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The bachelor’s is the level at which a health science degree becomes useful, and it is the level most online programs are built around. Two very different students enroll in it. The first already holds an allied-health credential – an associate degree in radiologic technology, respiratory therapy, dental hygiene, sonography, surgical technology, paramedicine, or medical laboratory technology – and needs a bachelor’s to move into supervision, education, quality, or administration, or simply because the profession’s own credentialing body is shifting toward the bachelor’s as the entry standard. For this student, the online BS in Health Science is a degree-completion program: it accepts the clinical credential as a block of credit and adds roughly two years of upper-division coursework. The second student is starting from scratch, often intending to apply to physician assistant, physical therapy, occupational therapy, or another clinical graduate program, and wants a science-based major that builds those prerequisites in.
The same degree title serves both, but the programs are not interchangeable. A degree-completion program assumes you already have your science and clinical foundation and will not teach it; a traditional four-year program teaches it from the start. This page explains both formats, what the coursework covers, which track leads where, and how to compare programs without being misled by a shared title.
A Bachelor of Science in Health Science (BSHS) is a 120-credit, non-clinical undergraduate degree that combines a natural-science foundation with coursework in health systems, policy, ethics, epidemiology, and research methods, plus a track such as health administration, health education and promotion, health informatics, pre-professional preparation, or community health. It does not lead to a clinical license.
It is a bachelor’s program designed for students who already hold an associate degree or certificate in a clinical allied-health field. The program awards a block of credit for the clinical credential – the amount varies considerably by school – and delivers the remaining upper-division coursework, usually online. It is the most common form of the online BS in Health Science.
Yes, if the program includes the specific prerequisite courses those graduate programs require – typically anatomy and physiology with labs, general and organic chemistry with labs, biology with labs, physics, statistics, and psychology, with the exact list varying by program. A pre-professional track in health science is built around this. Confirm the prerequisite list of your target graduate programs against the curriculum, and confirm how labs are delivered online.
Approximately 120 semester hours. In a degree-completion program, a substantial share arrives as transfer and block credit for your clinical credential, and you complete the balance at the bachelor’s-granting school. How large that balance is depends entirely on the school’s credit evaluation.
Match it to the role. Health administration for supervision and management, health education and promotion for community and patient education roles (and CHES eligibility), health informatics for data and records work, pre-professional for clinical graduate school, and community or public health for population-level work. A health science degree without a track reads as general to employers; the track is what gives it direction.
No. Public health degrees are organized around epidemiology, biostatistics, and community intervention and may hold CEPH accreditation. Healthcare administration degrees are business degrees applied to health organizations. Health science is broader, carries a stronger natural-science core than either, and offers those areas as tracks rather than as the entire degree.
For a full map of this program area, start here: Health Science Program Guide
Every school list on this site is ordered by the BOC Score, computed from the most recent school-level data published by the U.S. Department of Education (College Scorecard and IPEDS). To qualify, a school must be currently operating and accredited by an agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Each eligible school is then scored on five measures, percentile-ranked against schools at the same credential level:
Schools without enough outcome data appear after ranked schools, without a score. Advertising never affects these rankings. Read the full methodology.
Source:IPEDSCollege Scorecard
Source:IPEDSCollege Scorecard
Source:IPEDSCollege Scorecard
Source:IPEDSCollege Scorecard
Source:IPEDSCollege Scorecard
Source:IPEDSCollege Scorecard
Source:IPEDSCollege Scorecard
Source:Accreditor: Middle States Commission on Higher EducationIPEDSCollege Scorecard
This is the dominant form of the online health science bachelor’s, and it exists because the allied-health professions largely credential at the associate level while the roles above the bench – lead technologist, department supervisor, clinical educator, quality coordinator, program director in a technical school – increasingly expect a bachelor’s. The program accepts your clinical associate degree or certificate, plus your registry or license, as a block of credit and adds the upper-division content: health policy, healthcare law and ethics, research methods, epidemiology, leadership, and a track. Because the science foundation is assumed, these programs are light on laboratory coursework and heavy on writing, analysis, and applied projects.
What to verify is the block-credit policy in detail. Schools differ substantially in how many credits they award for the same credential, whether that credit applies to the major or only to electives, and whether the credential must be current. Get the evaluation in writing before enrolling. A difference of a semester’s worth of credit between two schools outweighs any difference in per-credit rate.
For students without a clinical credential, the BS in Health Science is a full 120-credit major built from the ground up: general education, a science core with labs, the health-systems sequence, and a track. Online delivery is common for the non-lab portion and varies for the labs – virtual simulation, at-home kits, or required on-campus lab sessions. If your goal is a clinical graduate program, the pre-professional track is the one to look at, and the lab delivery question becomes decisive, because PA, PT, and OT admissions committees generally want lab science they recognize. Ask the program which graduate schools have accepted its online labs.
A bachelor’s in healthcare administration is the better choice if you already know you want management and have no interest in the science or the other tracks. A bachelor’s in public health is better if population-level work and the MPH pathway are the goal. A bachelor’s in health information management is better if data and records are the draw, since the RHIA credential requires a CAHIIM-accredited HIM program that a health science informatics track generally is not. And kinesiology is the closer fit for exercise science, athletic training prerequisites, and movement-based clinical graduate programs.
| Course Topic | What You Learn |
|---|---|
| Anatomy & Physiology, Biology, Chemistry | The science foundation; taught in traditional programs, assumed and credited in degree-completion programs |
| U.S. Healthcare System & Policy | How care is organized, financed, and regulated, and how policy changes reach the clinic |
| Healthcare Law & Ethics | Privacy, consent, liability, professional boundaries, and the regulatory environment of health organizations |
| Epidemiology | Measuring disease in populations, study design, and interpreting risk |
| Research Methods in Health Science | Reading, evaluating, and designing studies; evidence-based practice |
| Health Communication or Health Promotion | Behavior change theory, program planning, and communicating with patients and communities |
| Leadership in Health Organizations | Supervision, teams, quality improvement, and change management in clinical settings |
| Track Courses | Administration, education, informatics, pre-professional science, or community health, typically 15 to 24 credits |
| Capstone or Internship | An applied project, often at a current employer, or a supervised placement |
Traditional programs carry the science prerequisite chain you would expect: biology before anatomy and physiology, college algebra before chemistry, statistics before research methods and epidemiology. Degree-completion programs have fewer prerequisites but stricter admission requirements, typically a completed clinical associate degree or certificate from an accredited program plus a current registry or license. Before you enroll, confirm:
If you are moving faster than a standard plan, compare accelerated health science programs.
Transfer and block credit is the single largest variable in the cost and length of an online health science bachelor’s. Rules vary by institution, so confirm:
See Affordable Online Health Science Degrees for more on managing total program cost.
There is no programmatic accreditor for general health science bachelor’s degrees. Verify that the institution holds accreditation from a recognized institutional accreditor – such as HLC, SACSCOC, or MSCHE – through the U.S. Department of Education database.
The bachelor’s is the working credential in this field. It is the level that supports movement from a clinical bench role into supervision, education, and quality work, that makes you eligible for the CHES exam on the health education side, and that satisfies the education requirement for most non-clinical health positions. A master’s in health science is pursued later, generally by people who want to teach in an allied-health program, lead a department or service line, or specialize in an area such as informatics or health education at a deeper level. Medical and health services managers had a median annual wage of $123,860 (BLS OEWS, May 2025); management roles are usually reached through experience plus a bachelor’s, with a master’s increasingly common at larger organizations.
Compare degree options:
Data verified: August 25, 2026. Salary, employment, and tuition figures on this page are sourced from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (OEWS May 2025; Employment Projections 2024–2034) and the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard (2023 cohort). The source agency and data year are cited inline with every statistic.
Back to Online Health Science Degrees: Programs & Careers (2026)
