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This is an e-mail I received yesterday from on the APPIC Internship Listserv from Dr Steve McCutcheon, PhD, who is Chair of the APPIC Board of Directors. I thought it was timely, since we recently talked about the supply/demand issue involved in internship placements
One of the points they talk about (limiting program spots to the # of spots they can consistently place) I actually proposed on here earlier this year/last year (they must have thought my idea was awesome. 😀 ) . They really need to make some serious changes because the numbers seem to be getting worse each year.
------
Dear students, interns and fellows The internship supply/demand imbalance has been of great concern to the student community for a number of years. Students frequently contact APPIC to ask what were doing to make the situation better. As Chair of the APPIC Board, Ive strived to keep students informed about the many actions APPIC has undertaken in this effort. As youll appreciate, the imbalance is not caused by APPIC and cannot be solved by APPIC alone. Instead, the imbalance is caused by multiple factors, including the increasing demand by students for doctoral training, by funding limitations for mental and behavioral health in the community, by the economics of higher education, etc. Because of the multiplicity of causes, any single solution is doomed to failure. Instead, its essential to find factors that mitigate the imbalance on multiple fronts, and to work collaboratively with all partners in the educational process. Toward that end, APPIC and APA recently convened the Imbalance Meeting, which brought together a select group of representatives to establish an action plan.
The report from the Imbalance Meeting has just been finalized and each of the training councils involved are distributing it to their respective memberships. I sent the following message to our APPIC Training Directors. Im forwarding this message to you in the interest of keeping you informed about our efforts on your behalf. You may have already received a copy from APAGS, but in case youre not a member, I wanted to make sure that you had access to this report.
Steve
Steve McCutcheon, PhD
Chair, APPIC Board of Directors
Director, Psychology Training Programs
VA Puget Sound, Seattle
From: McCutcheon, Stephen R. [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2008 4:01 PM
To: APPIC Members News
Subject: [members-news] Imbalance Meeting report
APPIC MEMBERS-NEWS
---
Dear APPIC colleagues In August, I asked for your input regarding ideas to improve the internship supply/demand imbalance, in preparation for a meeting that I was to attend on behalf of APPIC. The Imbalance Meeting was convened by APPIC and APA, and included one representative from each of the five doctoral training councils as well as APAGS (the graduate student association of APA). As you know, APPIC has been extensively involved for many years in trying to improve this problem. The Imbalance Meeting convened this past September was the latest step in building consensus about pathways that the profession can take to improve this problem for all of our students.
The meeting proved to be frank, collegial and productive. Everyone in attendance worked hard for one and a half days to advocate for their constituency, to listen to dissenting opinions, and to eventually craft a consensus document about steps that each of the councils would commit to taking in the short-, mid- and long-term. A consensus report has been completed and is included below. I hope that youll take a few minutes to read this over.
Id like to draw your attention to two points in particular.
APPIC attended the meeting with a primary request: that doctoral programs accept responsibility for the number of students they produce who enter the Match - either by decreasing enrollment or directly contributing to the growth of internship positions - to a degree that is proportional to the success of those programs in the Match. For example, a program that successfully matches all of their students would have a need neither to decrease enrollment nor contribute to internship expansion. However, a program that consistently has a poor Match rate would have an obligation to decrease their enrollment and/or contribute to internship expansion, to a degree that is proportional to the difficulty they have in placing students. Taking such responsibility seems only fair. It would go far to improving the imbalance without impinging on the educational and business decisions of doctoral programs, or by decreasing the workforce of psychology in the absence of hard data on the nations needs for psychologists. As youll see in the following report, this critical principle found agreement among the representatives at the meeting.
Additionally, the majority of doctoral councils noted that their graduate programs require or expect their students to attend APA or CPA accredited internships. These doctoral programs see the imbalance problem as especially acute, given that only some 70% of APPIC member internships are accredited. This means that, de facto, their students have a smaller pool of internships to which they can apply.
APPIC values our entire membership. Indeed, excellent training can be found in both accredited and non-accredited programs. On the whole, however, accreditation is the gold standard for quality training. APPIC has always encouraged our members to view APPIC membership as a first step in eventually attaining accreditation. At the same time, we understand that there can be financial and administrative barriers to achieving accreditation for otherwise deserving programs, especially during hard financial times. Nonetheless, the importance of external review (as happens in the accreditation process) is so critical in improving and certifying quality that the APPIC Board wants to redouble our efforts in making APA or CPA accreditation feasible and attractive to our members. At the Imbalance Meeting, the representatives generated a list of requests to be submitted to the APA Commission on Accreditation (CoA) that we believe will ease perceived barriers to seeking accreditation. These ideas include changes to the fee structure, procedures, etc. that could make accreditation more feasible for the 30% of APPIC members that have not yet taken this step. On our own, APPIC is also taking some steps to help our members: were partnering with CoA to present workshops at our Membership meeting in Portland, Oregon (April 2009) to make the accreditation process more accessible and user-friendly. If we can find ways to make accreditation more feasible for our members, we will contribute to easing the imbalance problem by increasing the pool of sites to which students can apply, even though this action alone does not impact the number of total positions.
These are two of the many action steps described in the following report. I hope youll review them all. What happens next? The consensus report will be widely distributed, and will certainly provoke more discussion and debate. The report will also be submitted to the Council of Chairs of Training Councils (CCTC) at our upcoming meeting on Oct. 23, and immediately following that, at the meeting of APAs Board of Educational Affairs (BEA). Further action steps are likely to grow out of these presentations, while concurrently, the individual councils will work to implement the agreements forged at the Imbalance Meeting.
If you have comments or questions that you want to direct to the APPIC Board, please feel free to send me a back channel message at [email protected]. If your comments would be better directed to fellow APPIC Training Directors, please consider posting a message to the discussion listserv (members-network). Directions for enrolling on the listserv and/or posting messages are found on the APPIC web page (www.appic.org). Just click on E-mail lists on the right hand side of the home page.
Steve
Steve McCutcheon, PhD
Chair, APPIC Board of Directors
Chair, Council of Chairs of Training Councils (CCTC)
Director, Psychology Training Programs
VA Puget Sound, Seattle
Background:
BEA and the Council of Chairs of Training Councils (CCTC) have been discussing the match imbalance as an ongoing agenda item. That is, there is a discrepancy between the numbers of students seeking an internship through the APPIC match system and the number of positions available. In recent conversations, consensus in the group has been that the internship match imbalance is a long standing and complex situation, embedded in a number of significant issues facing professional psychology at present. Nonetheless, given the significant impact the match imbalance is having on our next generation of professional psychologists, the sentiment is that it is the responsibility of the education and training community to take actions to try to mitigate the situation. At their March 2008 meeting the members of CCTC agreed to hold a meeting of key stakeholder groups represented in the membership of CCTC to discuss the points of agreement and disagreement between groups and, more importantly, agree to engage in specific action steps directed toward improving the match imbalance. The groups identified were:
American Psychological Association Education Directorate Staff (APA)
Association of Psychological Association of Graduate Students (APAGS)
Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers (APPIC)
Council of Combined and Integrated Doctoral Programs in Psychology (CCIDPIP)
Council of Counseling Psychology Training Programs (CCPTP)
Council of Directors of School Psychology Programs (CDSPP)
Council of University Directors of Clinical Psychology (CUDCP)
National Council of Schools and Programs in Professional Psychology (NCSPP)
It was further agreed that each group would send one representative, who would be to the extent possible empowered by their group to make decisions on the groups behalf. The intent was to facilitate conversation by keeping the size of the meeting small. Groups would be responsible for covering the expenses of their representative, with general meeting expenses jointly shared by APA and APPIC. APA and APPIC agreed to facilitate the meeting with the understanding that they would also be active participants and that the discussions were to be shaped by all at the table.
In preparation for the meeting, each representative was asked to review the proposed pathways discussed in the articles that were published in the November 2007 special issue of Training and Education in Professional Psychology on the match imbalance and a report presented to the APA Board of Educational Affairs in the fall of 2007 on this issue.
Participants were also asked to discuss the following questions with their members prior to the meeting:
What are the key issues for your group?
What have you been doing to address the match imbalance?
What could/would you be willing to do?
What wouldn't you be willing to do?
How would you organize your actions steps in terms of a time line?
What would you ask of the other groups sitting at the table?
Overview of the Meeting:
The meeting took place over a day and a half. Mid-way through the first afternoon an extended break in the meeting occurred such that representatives could contact their respective boards or units, report on the discussions held to that point, and make decisions regarding the actions to which they were willing to commit. The remainder of the meeting was spent crafting the action steps that are detailed in this report.
Outcomes:
The group agreed to the following overarching concepts:
1.We have a collective responsibility for actions to address the match imbalance.
2.Collaborative efforts across the groups will benefit students and professional psychology.
3.Continuing attention to the match imbalance is required and necessitates the development of strategies that can be implemented in the short-, mid-, and long-term.
4.Any action designed to impact the quantity of positions must ensure that the quality of education and training experiences is maintained.
Pathways and group actions are proposed and presented in Appendix A.
The group also discussed two additional recommendations that were proposed in the special issue of TEPP, but did not target them as specific action items for the following reasons.
One of the points they talk about (limiting program spots to the # of spots they can consistently place) I actually proposed on here earlier this year/last year (they must have thought my idea was awesome. 😀 ) . They really need to make some serious changes because the numbers seem to be getting worse each year.
------
Dear students, interns and fellows The internship supply/demand imbalance has been of great concern to the student community for a number of years. Students frequently contact APPIC to ask what were doing to make the situation better. As Chair of the APPIC Board, Ive strived to keep students informed about the many actions APPIC has undertaken in this effort. As youll appreciate, the imbalance is not caused by APPIC and cannot be solved by APPIC alone. Instead, the imbalance is caused by multiple factors, including the increasing demand by students for doctoral training, by funding limitations for mental and behavioral health in the community, by the economics of higher education, etc. Because of the multiplicity of causes, any single solution is doomed to failure. Instead, its essential to find factors that mitigate the imbalance on multiple fronts, and to work collaboratively with all partners in the educational process. Toward that end, APPIC and APA recently convened the Imbalance Meeting, which brought together a select group of representatives to establish an action plan.
The report from the Imbalance Meeting has just been finalized and each of the training councils involved are distributing it to their respective memberships. I sent the following message to our APPIC Training Directors. Im forwarding this message to you in the interest of keeping you informed about our efforts on your behalf. You may have already received a copy from APAGS, but in case youre not a member, I wanted to make sure that you had access to this report.
Steve
Steve McCutcheon, PhD
Chair, APPIC Board of Directors
Director, Psychology Training Programs
VA Puget Sound, Seattle
From: McCutcheon, Stephen R. [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2008 4:01 PM
To: APPIC Members News
Subject: [members-news] Imbalance Meeting report
APPIC MEMBERS-NEWS
---
Dear APPIC colleagues In August, I asked for your input regarding ideas to improve the internship supply/demand imbalance, in preparation for a meeting that I was to attend on behalf of APPIC. The Imbalance Meeting was convened by APPIC and APA, and included one representative from each of the five doctoral training councils as well as APAGS (the graduate student association of APA). As you know, APPIC has been extensively involved for many years in trying to improve this problem. The Imbalance Meeting convened this past September was the latest step in building consensus about pathways that the profession can take to improve this problem for all of our students.
The meeting proved to be frank, collegial and productive. Everyone in attendance worked hard for one and a half days to advocate for their constituency, to listen to dissenting opinions, and to eventually craft a consensus document about steps that each of the councils would commit to taking in the short-, mid- and long-term. A consensus report has been completed and is included below. I hope that youll take a few minutes to read this over.
Id like to draw your attention to two points in particular.
APPIC attended the meeting with a primary request: that doctoral programs accept responsibility for the number of students they produce who enter the Match - either by decreasing enrollment or directly contributing to the growth of internship positions - to a degree that is proportional to the success of those programs in the Match. For example, a program that successfully matches all of their students would have a need neither to decrease enrollment nor contribute to internship expansion. However, a program that consistently has a poor Match rate would have an obligation to decrease their enrollment and/or contribute to internship expansion, to a degree that is proportional to the difficulty they have in placing students. Taking such responsibility seems only fair. It would go far to improving the imbalance without impinging on the educational and business decisions of doctoral programs, or by decreasing the workforce of psychology in the absence of hard data on the nations needs for psychologists. As youll see in the following report, this critical principle found agreement among the representatives at the meeting.
Additionally, the majority of doctoral councils noted that their graduate programs require or expect their students to attend APA or CPA accredited internships. These doctoral programs see the imbalance problem as especially acute, given that only some 70% of APPIC member internships are accredited. This means that, de facto, their students have a smaller pool of internships to which they can apply.
APPIC values our entire membership. Indeed, excellent training can be found in both accredited and non-accredited programs. On the whole, however, accreditation is the gold standard for quality training. APPIC has always encouraged our members to view APPIC membership as a first step in eventually attaining accreditation. At the same time, we understand that there can be financial and administrative barriers to achieving accreditation for otherwise deserving programs, especially during hard financial times. Nonetheless, the importance of external review (as happens in the accreditation process) is so critical in improving and certifying quality that the APPIC Board wants to redouble our efforts in making APA or CPA accreditation feasible and attractive to our members. At the Imbalance Meeting, the representatives generated a list of requests to be submitted to the APA Commission on Accreditation (CoA) that we believe will ease perceived barriers to seeking accreditation. These ideas include changes to the fee structure, procedures, etc. that could make accreditation more feasible for the 30% of APPIC members that have not yet taken this step. On our own, APPIC is also taking some steps to help our members: were partnering with CoA to present workshops at our Membership meeting in Portland, Oregon (April 2009) to make the accreditation process more accessible and user-friendly. If we can find ways to make accreditation more feasible for our members, we will contribute to easing the imbalance problem by increasing the pool of sites to which students can apply, even though this action alone does not impact the number of total positions.
These are two of the many action steps described in the following report. I hope youll review them all. What happens next? The consensus report will be widely distributed, and will certainly provoke more discussion and debate. The report will also be submitted to the Council of Chairs of Training Councils (CCTC) at our upcoming meeting on Oct. 23, and immediately following that, at the meeting of APAs Board of Educational Affairs (BEA). Further action steps are likely to grow out of these presentations, while concurrently, the individual councils will work to implement the agreements forged at the Imbalance Meeting.
If you have comments or questions that you want to direct to the APPIC Board, please feel free to send me a back channel message at [email protected]. If your comments would be better directed to fellow APPIC Training Directors, please consider posting a message to the discussion listserv (members-network). Directions for enrolling on the listserv and/or posting messages are found on the APPIC web page (www.appic.org). Just click on E-mail lists on the right hand side of the home page.
Steve
Steve McCutcheon, PhD
Chair, APPIC Board of Directors
Chair, Council of Chairs of Training Councils (CCTC)
Director, Psychology Training Programs
VA Puget Sound, Seattle
***********************************************************************
Match Imbalance Meeting
September 5-6, 2008
BEA and the Council of Chairs of Training Councils (CCTC) have been discussing the match imbalance as an ongoing agenda item. That is, there is a discrepancy between the numbers of students seeking an internship through the APPIC match system and the number of positions available. In recent conversations, consensus in the group has been that the internship match imbalance is a long standing and complex situation, embedded in a number of significant issues facing professional psychology at present. Nonetheless, given the significant impact the match imbalance is having on our next generation of professional psychologists, the sentiment is that it is the responsibility of the education and training community to take actions to try to mitigate the situation. At their March 2008 meeting the members of CCTC agreed to hold a meeting of key stakeholder groups represented in the membership of CCTC to discuss the points of agreement and disagreement between groups and, more importantly, agree to engage in specific action steps directed toward improving the match imbalance. The groups identified were:
American Psychological Association Education Directorate Staff (APA)
Association of Psychological Association of Graduate Students (APAGS)
Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers (APPIC)
Council of Combined and Integrated Doctoral Programs in Psychology (CCIDPIP)
Council of Counseling Psychology Training Programs (CCPTP)
Council of Directors of School Psychology Programs (CDSPP)
Council of University Directors of Clinical Psychology (CUDCP)
National Council of Schools and Programs in Professional Psychology (NCSPP)
It was further agreed that each group would send one representative, who would be to the extent possible empowered by their group to make decisions on the groups behalf. The intent was to facilitate conversation by keeping the size of the meeting small. Groups would be responsible for covering the expenses of their representative, with general meeting expenses jointly shared by APA and APPIC. APA and APPIC agreed to facilitate the meeting with the understanding that they would also be active participants and that the discussions were to be shaped by all at the table.
In preparation for the meeting, each representative was asked to review the proposed pathways discussed in the articles that were published in the November 2007 special issue of Training and Education in Professional Psychology on the match imbalance and a report presented to the APA Board of Educational Affairs in the fall of 2007 on this issue.
Participants were also asked to discuss the following questions with their members prior to the meeting:
What are the key issues for your group?
What have you been doing to address the match imbalance?
What could/would you be willing to do?
What wouldn't you be willing to do?
How would you organize your actions steps in terms of a time line?
What would you ask of the other groups sitting at the table?
Overview of the Meeting:
The meeting took place over a day and a half. Mid-way through the first afternoon an extended break in the meeting occurred such that representatives could contact their respective boards or units, report on the discussions held to that point, and make decisions regarding the actions to which they were willing to commit. The remainder of the meeting was spent crafting the action steps that are detailed in this report.
Outcomes:
The group agreed to the following overarching concepts:
1.We have a collective responsibility for actions to address the match imbalance.
2.Collaborative efforts across the groups will benefit students and professional psychology.
3.Continuing attention to the match imbalance is required and necessitates the development of strategies that can be implemented in the short-, mid-, and long-term.
4.Any action designed to impact the quantity of positions must ensure that the quality of education and training experiences is maintained.
Pathways and group actions are proposed and presented in Appendix A.
The group also discussed two additional recommendations that were proposed in the special issue of TEPP, but did not target them as specific action items for the following reasons.
- Market forces will resolve this issue in time: the group felt this was not an acceptable course of action in favor of the steps they agreed to
- Academic program policies should be changed to remove requirements that students attend an accredited internship: the group felt this raised issues of quality which they felt was important to promote; especially accreditation
