Two community colleges in Missouri, including one in Springfield, will soon offer bachelor’s degrees in respiratory therapy.
Ozarks Technical Community College and St. Louis Community College announced their approval from the Coordinating Board for Higher Education to offer respiratory therapy as a bachelor’s degree this week. It’s the first time a community college in Missouri has gotten approval to offer a bachelor’s in any subject.
Aaron Light, Respiratory Therapy Program Director at OTC, says this comes after a new requirement by CoARC.
“When CoARC had their accreditation change that has to be at the bachelor’s level to get a new respiratory therapy program, that was the only way we could actually get a program up into that area was to make it at a bachelor’s degree,” Light said.
Light says, although the COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t the reason OTC began discussing making respiratory therapy a bachelor’s program, it did accelerate the process. According to the Missouri Economic Research Information Center, the demand for respiratory therapists will grow by 28% by 2026.
The program is set to begin in 2022, according to Light.
This is the first step in the full approval process. The programs must now seek approval from the Commission on Accreditation for Respiratory Care (CoARC), and the Higher Learning Commission (HLC).