Advocating for Healthcare Management Education—and the Future of Healthcare Leadership
Before January 2025, I probably spent an hour or two a month on advocacy. Today, I spend roughly a day a week on it.
I never expected advocacy to become such a significant part of my role as President and CEO of AUPHA—and, frankly, I don’t think it should be. Advocacy is not AUPHA’s primary purpose. Our primary purpose remains serving our members and advancing healthcare management education. But the policy environment has changed enough that we have a responsibility to make sure our members’ interests and our field’s perspective are represented when important decisions are being made.
Over the past 18 months, advocacy has become a more significant part of how we serve our members—not because it is our primary mission, but because policy decisions are having direct implications for our programs, our students, and the future healthcare workforce.
The federal changes to graduate student borrowing limits provide a good example.
As many of you know, the Department of Education’s RISE rulemaking process followed passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025, which established different federal borrowing limits for graduate and professional students. The final definition of a “professional degree” excluded healthcare management degrees, including the MHA and related degrees, as well as degrees in a number of other health professions.
From the beginning, we believed this was about much more than student financial aid.
It is about the healthcare workforce.
Healthcare management professionals are essential to our healthcare system. They lead hospitals and health systems, manage clinical operations, oversee quality and patient safety, improve access and efficiency, develop strategy, manage resources, and help organizations navigate an extraordinarily complex environment.
The educational programs that prepare these professionals therefore matter—not only to our universities, but to the healthcare organizations and communities they serve.
We believe healthcare management education deserves to be recognized for what it is: professional education preparing people for professional roles essential to the delivery of healthcare.
So we got to work. We communicated with policymakers and federal agencies, submitted formal comments, kept our members informed, and created resources to help our community understand what was happening and why it mattered. Those resources are available on the AUPHA advocacy page.
But as this work unfolded, something else became increasingly clear to me: we don’t have to do it alone.
Finding Strength in Our Collective Voice
AUPHA is a full and founding member of the Federation of Associations of Schools of the Health Professions (FASHP), which brings together organizations representing the health professions education community. Through FASHP, healthcare management education has a voice alongside other health professions facing many of the same challenges.
I also serve on the FASHP Government Relations Committee, giving me a direct opportunity to participate in shaping FASHP’s federal advocacy priorities and responses. I have particularly valued these conversations because they remind me that, while healthcare management has its own unique identity, many of the issues affecting our programs are shared by other health professions.
Our involvement with the Advanced Professional Workforce Alliance (APWA) provides another, somewhat different, voice. APWA is broader than FASHP, bringing together organizations representing a wide range of professional education and workforce interests. AUPHA is one of nine organizations represented on APWA’s Steering Committee, giving us an important leadership role in this broader coalition.
During the RISE rulemaking process, these complementary voices have been particularly valuable. AUPHA has advocated specifically for healthcare management education. FASHP has brought the collective voice of health professions education to the discussion. APWA has approached the issue from the broader perspective of advanced professional education and workforce development.
But advocacy isn’t the only way we can respond to challenges like this. Sometimes the best response is to innovate.
Just in the past few days, Liaison International, which operates AUPHA’s HAMPCAS as well as application services for many other health professions, announced a partnership with Juno. The partnership will give graduate students across participating health professions another avenue to explore financing their education beyond traditional federal student loans.
I find this especially encouraging because it is another example of the power of the collective. Organizations serving different professions—and the companies that support them—can come together to develop new solutions to shared challenges.
It is also a reminder that advocacy is not always about changing a policy. Sometimes it is about finding new ways to solve the problems that policy creates.
Our field is stronger when we advocate—and innovate—together.
Making Sure We Have a Seat at the Table
Healthcare management sits at a distinctive intersection of healthcare, business, public policy, education, and the health professions. Sometimes that makes us difficult to categorize. And when policymakers rely on traditional definitions and categories, that can become a disadvantage.
That is why I believe we have an obligation to tell our own story. We need policymakers to understand who our graduates are, what they do, and why healthcare management education matters to the healthcare system. We cannot assume that someone else will tell that story for us.
The policy environment surrounding higher education and healthcare is changing rapidly. Federal student aid is changing. Workforce needs are changing. Healthcare organizations are confronting unprecedented complexity. Policymakers are making decisions that can have long-term consequences for the educational programs that prepare tomorrow’s leaders.
Advocacy, therefore, is not simply about responding when a particular regulation threatens our programs.
It is about making sure our field has a seat at the table before the decisions are made.
That is something I believe AUPHA must continue to embrace—not as a replacement for our core mission, but as one way we fulfill it.
For me, the past 18 months have reinforced something I have believed throughout my 31 years as an AUPHA member—and especially during my six and a half years as President and CEO: our greatest strength is our community.
When we bring the collective expertise and experience of our members to the table, build relationships with organizations that share our concerns, and speak up for the importance of our field, we can have an impact far beyond what any one organization—or any one person—could have alone.
Ultimately, this is not just about protecting our academic programs.
It is about ensuring a strong talent pool of professionals who will lead healthcare organizations tomorrow.
Warmly,
Dan