There were lots of PsyD's (and PhDs from professional schools) on the APPIC listserv last month complaining about the size of their debt and the hardship that it causes them once they get out onto a rough job market. I've pasted most of the debt-specific e-mails here (with names removed), including a few that are quite eye-opening:
FRUSTRATION
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I'm frustrated. Many of us did not partake in APA accredited internships as there are not enough of them. However, more and more post doc sites are requiring that applicants be from APA accredited internships. How are we supposed to get a post doc? Have I just wasted 4 years and over $100,000.00? - DC
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Hi DC,
Don't feel badly. I am at an APA accredited internship site and still can not find a job or post-doc. I can definitely sympathize and I too feel like I have just wasted 6 years and $150,000.
- L
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Out of interest as someone who does APA site visits and does doctoral training, could I hear from some of you who have large loans as to whether is is the result of purely doctoral training or doctoral training plus undergraduate training and what is the proportion of each? It is a worry that students accumulate such large amounts, over $50K, by the time they
finish.
- HJH
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In response to your question about debt. Yes, by the time I graduate this upcoming June (yeah!), I will be looking at $150,000 in debt. In addition, I still owe 10,000 from my undergraduate degree. Many of my school colleagues were fortunate enough to have family that could help foot some of the bill, or managed to work in addition to being a full-time student. Like many others, I am not able to benefit from family contributions. I eventually got a part time job, but have counted largely on financial aid for tuition, living expenses, and to pay for other school related expenses (dissertation, etc).
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I am about $120,000 in debt, only about $20,000 is from undergrad, the rest is graduate school and internship. I do understand the frustration concerning finding post-docs. I was lucky enough to find one immediately after graduating but it wasn't an exact match to what I wanted. However, it has given me the supervision needed to take the EPPP and get licensed. Also, once you have a job and feel a little less stressed about finding a job, it is so much easier to find other options. While at my post-doc, I have been offered several jobs in the areas of my particular interest. Hope this helps!
- S
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I also have a ton of debt, primarily from grad school- about $120,000, and about another $10,000 from undergrad. The majority of it was from paying for grad school tuition and getting extra money to live on (in addition to working outside of the program).
- NM
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Hello,
I wanted to express that I hear much of what people are reporting here from the trainees that I have at our site. $100,000 plus in debt,
heading out into a rough market. I think another issue is that for a number of people, they've put their lives on hold during graduate school, and many marry, start families and/or purchase housing shortly after graduate school, which increases the financial stressor during the transition from student to professional.
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Someone asked the question of why APPIC Fellowship sites are beginning
to require APA internships as a pre-requisite. We have an APPIC
Fellowship and currently do not require an APA internship. However,
this year for our 1 position, we received 28 applications. I take
approximately 2 hours to review each application for Fellow candidates.
Our site also receives approximately 100 applications for MA
internships, MSW internships, doctoral externships, annually, for 8-10
positions in that general category. All of these come to us between
January and March. From a DOT perspective, it's quite a labor intensive
process to review applications. As this relates to Fellow candidates,
in order to decrease the number of applications and increase the
relative quality of those applications reviewed, I've considered
requiring an APA internship as a pre-requisite. I haven't done it yet,
for the very reason stated, that there are some exemplary candidates
who, for whatever reason, did not match to an APA site.
- MSZ
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I have over $130,000 in loans, purely as a result of my doctoral
education.
- G
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Regarding the loans issue: I'm over $130,000 by the end. This is completely
due to loans during grad school accrued for tuition and some to supplement
living costs (we didn't take any personal loans, just the extra from my
Federal loans). I've noticed a huge difference in loans between myself who
attended a private university and my fellow interns who went through a state
school. They have way less.
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I agree-I had to rely on student loans to cover expenses during graduate school. I had no debt prior to graduate school and my degree cost me $157,000. I'm trying to pay off $831/mo. in addition to a $7,000 loan that wasn't eligible for consolidation. I was lucky in that I got a job following graduation instead of a post-doc to help afford this but it is beyond daunting. Especially having one loan vulnerable to increasing interest rates.I love what I do but I wonder if it would have been better to follow a different career path that wouldn't have killed me financially. Sadly, this is the standard cost of the education I received at my school and I think prices have risen since I graduated.
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I also accumulated 125,000 in loans from just graduate training. I eesentially make a mortgage payment to sallie mae each month and I am still on a 30 year payment plan to rid myself of my loans. The low pay of APA accredited internship and post-doc made this all the more challenging as I had to defer payments and use a credit card to finance my move to another state where I was matched not to mention traveling for interviews etc.
- SW
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hi,
i'm in about $120,000 from grad school and $30,000 from undergrad - all from a combination of school-related expenses (tuition, fees, texts, traveling for interviews, psychotherapy required by our doctoral program, etc.) and general living expenses (bulk goes to rent, bills, food, etc).
-jkl
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I am finishing my internship this year and after undergraduate and
graduate school have accumulated 100,000 dollars in loans. I have
approximately 25,000 from undergraduate and 75,000 from graduate
training. This makes the post-doc requirement difficult since those
loans begin to come due and we are making essentially an internship
salary if we are lucky.
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I attended an APA-approved state university PsyD program. I was never allowed to have in-state tuition status for the six years of school and had to pay out-of-state tuition. I have accumulated over $100k in student loans for the master's and doctorate (and I had to get loans during Internship, because I interned with an $18,000 salary outside of NYC where the cost of living was very high). And still having to wait to accumulate supervised hours, I make less money now than I did before I started grad school.
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I also have over $100,000 in debt strictly from graduate school federal
loans which I have had to defer for the past year and a half as I have not
yet found a postdoc or a position that pays enough to allow me to repay my
loans, even with an APA-accredited internship. I also worked at least one
job during graduate school and sometimes two. It's nice to know I'm not
alone in this, but I wish that there weren't so many of us in the same
situation! If I could do it again I would have spent time working between
undergrad and grad school to build up savings, but hindsight is always
20/20. Still, I feel what I learned was invaluable, and I look forward to
being able to use it and to be able to pay off my loans one day.
- JE
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Hi,
I attended a state school in an area with a low cost of living. I accrued $65,000 of debt (living expenses, texts, fees, some tuition costs), which is consistent with most of those coming from my program. I also accrued significant medical expences $30,000 plus because our program did not cover students of my age (30+) and private insurance was cost-prohibitive. Oh, the life of a student.
- alp
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I am 150,000 plus in debt.
120,000 plus graduate
30,000 undergrad.
- R
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140,000-Graduate school only
Ph.D
- AF
Certified Educator of Infant Massage
California School of Professional Psychology
Alliant International University
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My current tab is 230k, just for graduate school. I was accepted at a =
school in a very expensive part of the country, and now have tacked on more =
private loan debt so I can possibly do an unfunded post-doc next year (I did not
match through APPCN - I'm in Neuropsych). This despite a 4.0 GPA,
professional work prior to internship, APA-accredited graduate and
internship training (both with specialty neuropsych training), numerous
publications and presentations, supervision with 3 different board =
certified neuropsychologists, and 17 postdoc applications with a wide range of
geographic diversity and good fit. The system is broken - this will not =
stop me from succeeding within it, however
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My graduate education cost $130,000. That one is definitely going to cripple
my financial future/early career for a while. When I think about that, I
always seem to go back to a conversation I had with an internship
supervisor. He disclosed that the cost of obtaining APA accreditation for a
small intern program was upwards of $25,000. I don't know if that's true or
not. And recently I read an article in the APA Monitor which expressed
concerns about the large number of early career psychologists that
discontinue membership (declines after 5 years post-doc). Of course, one of
the main issues cited was debt.
All of those things together make me pretty frustrated too. Personally, I am
concerned about the lack of advocacy from our organization (APA – I'm a dues
paying member). This may be just my perception, but I remember reading some
of the post-doc and intern salaries and thinking this is outright abusive!
Why can't our organization help with things like that; then just maybe we
early career psychologists will not have so much debt – which help keep up
membership. Cause and Effect!
I am aware that money and merit facilitates one being able to sit at the
"esteemed" table. I have the merit; I just can't afford the expensive
"accredited" seat. Perhaps our organization will increase its efforts to
provide assistance in that regard. I for one certainly hope so!
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I am graduating with $187,000 of debt, just from
graduate school. I attended a university near my
hometown, to keep cost of moving to a minimum. I
worked as a waitress and tutor throughout my graduate
career. I attended an APA accredited program but
failed to match for an internship, and I ended up
accepting an unpaid internship position. Luckily, I
had saved about $20,000 through working, so I was able
to use that money to live on during my internship year
and didn't have to take out any more loans. I am glad
that persons affiliated with the APA are showing
concern about this issue. It is obvious that we are
all very
upset about this, and that many of us have questioned
our decision to enter this field. It is a shame that
so many people that would make great psychologists and
help so many people in need are rethinking their
decision to pursue this career. And it is a shame that
this is our reward for attempting to better ourselves
and the world we live in through higher education.
- V
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Hello, all:
As one who has been out of a Ph.D. program and is now repaying $130,000 worth of debt, I can attest that it does cripple your financial status for quite a while. The high debt-to-income ratio certainly affects your credit score, which affects your ability to get all sorts of credit, and even commonplace things like getting a mortgage. I watch my psychiatric colleagues earning outrageous salaries for 10-15 minutes of time spent with clients and increasingly see job openings for either a LCSW or Ph.D. In our community near the state capital, child psychiatrists can charge more than $300 per session (10 minutes!!!). You do the math! If I had to do this over again, I would have gone to medical school.
Additionally, most of the insurance panels and credentialing organizations now require three years post-licensure experience in order to join their panels, raising the bar even higher. APA and its lobbying seem to have concentrated on getting masters-level psychologist's licenses, but have not addressed the insurance panel issue.
- PF
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Our profession has done an abysmal job of reckoning with the normal market forces of supply and demand. With the advent and proliferation of professional schools of psychology (see above), particularly over the past 20 years or so, the number of doctoral level graduates has far outpaced the number of internship and postdoctoral training positions. I am not intending to offend or sling mud; I'm simply stating a fact.
- Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School
