TY - JOUR T1 - Global health degrees: at what cost? JF - BMJ Global Health JO - BMJ Global Health DO - 10.1136/bmjgh-2020-003310 VL - 5 IS - 8 SP - e003310 AU - Anita Svadzian AU - Nathaly Aguilera Vasquez AU - Seye Abimbola AU - Madhukar Pai Y1 - 2020/08/01 UR - http://gh.bmj.com/content/5/8/e003310.abstract N2 - In theory, global health, as a field, takes pride in principles such as equity, fairness, reciprocity and bidirectional partnerships.1 In practice, many aspects of global health are dominated by individuals and institutions in high-income countries (HICs) who seem to benefit more than their counterparts in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs).2–4 Global health organisations are mostly head-quartered in HICs, and run by people, primarily men, from HICs.4 5 Further, authorship of global health publications is dominated by people in HICs,6–8 as well as editorial boards of global health journals.9 10What about global health education? In the past two decades, global health has become very popular among students in HICs. In response to higher demand and availability of increased funding, many HIC universities invested heavily in global health programmes.1 11 Although dozens of degree programmes in global health emerged as a consequence, it remains unclear who the target audience really is, and what it might cost to earn one of these degrees. Are these degree programmes aimed at LMICs, where training gaps are enormous,12 or are they primarily for the benefit of HIC trainees and institutions?To answer this question, we identified academic programmes that offer either a Master’s of Global Health or a Master’s of International Health degree. We used the Academic Global Health Programmes database maintained by the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH),11 supplemented by online searches for universities not included in the CUGH list (see box 1 for details). We focused on Master’s of Global or International Health programmes (on campus or online), rather than related degrees such as Master’s of Public Health (MPH) which might offer global health concentrations, options or tracks.Box 1 Lack of transparency: the approach and limitations to our analysisData were extracted by two authors (AS and NAV) with any discrepancies in double entry … ER -