Offered by many technical schools and community colleges, an Associate's Degree in Dental Hygiene, such as the one at the Pennsylvania College of Technology, offers a two-year study in dental hygiene for students completely new to the field and who haven’t taken college classes before. Students in an associate's degree program will find required courses in dental hygiene, oral health and nutrition, dental radiology, orofacial anatomy, preventive dentistry, introduction to periodontics, pharmacology, dental materials and specialties, community dental health and dental law and ethics. Associate programs also require general education core classes, such as fundamentals of speech, information technology, general psychology and math. Students interested in taking their dental hygiene education further may be able to apply their associate coursework to a four-year bachelor’s degree program.
Students enrolling in a four-year bachelor’s degree program in dental hygiene, such as the one offered by Northern Arizona University, will find courses in orientation to dental hygiene, radiology for dental assistants, preclinical dental hygiene, dental anatomy, oral embryology, introduction to dental assisting, head and neck anatomy, oral microbiology, pharmacology, periodontics, oral pathology, pain management, pain control, dental marketplace and oral health research. Dental hygiene bachelor’s students are also required to take general education courses, such as contemporary developments, English composition, introduction to sociology and lifetime fitness.
Dental hygienists looking to take their education to the highest collegiate level will take a collection of in-depth study courses such as the ones offered by the University of Bridgeport in their Master’s Degree in Dental Hygiene program. Classes include leadership in dental hygiene, dental health services administration, dental public health, dental hygiene advanced practice, evidence-based research, didactic student teaching and curriculum development and assessment. Students in many master’s programs, including those at the University of Bridgeport, may be required to complete a course where they research a thesis project.