I believe the idea in that thread was to hold graduate programs accountable for the internship match rates of their students. Despite the fact that only 50-60% of applicants match to APA-accredited internships, in general, many programs still manage to match 75+% of their students to accredited spots. However, there are also programs that match well under 50% of their students to accredited internships. The idea you've mentioned would then require these programs to either match a greater proportion of their students (ideally by admitting fewer students in the first place, and/or offering better opportunities and more support to those whom they do admit) or risk losing APA accreditation. This would then solve part of the problem by having these now-unaccredited programs A) being less attractive to students, and B) therefore likely sending fewer students out into internships (because they now have fewer students to begin with).
As cara mentioned, many of the most severe offenders happen to have very large class sizes, and are thereby contributing to a greater degree to the number of unmatched applicants. However, if all programs were held to an equal standard, even the more "traditional" programs would likely have to put more thought into how they're preparing their students for internships. I'm not sure this would be a bad thing.
I have argued for years that programs should only be allowed enough spots to cover how many students they can regularly place into an APA-acred internship slots (averaged over X number of years). Now that 'alternative' training paths are being pushed, there is less and less reason for programs to change anything unless they are made to change. Students often don't really know about the shortcomings and/or they are too far along to make an unbiased decision. It really is a bad situation for students, but the APA has not aggressively addressed this issue, and programs aren't going to self-police when it means leaving a great deal of $ on the table for someone else to take.
Being a student of these offender institutions, I absolutely agree as I am in the midst of not matching for the second year in a row. The first year I had 1 APPIC interview, and was advised to interview and rank several unaccredited (CAPIC) interviews. Probably because I refused to take an unpaid internship, I didn't match at all. While I don't have the exact statistics, I believe that cohort probably only matched 6/15 to APPIC (only 1 APA, and that was by chance because the site gained APA after the person matched to it). I think absolutely this is an indication of training and mentorship quality, which in turn contributes to a horrible reputation. I really had to take the personal time and energy to seek the level of training I needed to make myself a competitive candidate and develop the skills that are necessary to become a competent psychologist; I highlight that I had to seek these
myself and what I would consider above and beyond what would be offered to a typical student. So it would make complete sense to me that the program should be called out by the APA and have an even greater risk of pulling accreditation based on poor match rates. As Therapist mentioned, numerous students are encouraged to go the unaccredited route, thereby allowing for schools to manipulatively claim that they have a high "match rate".
This second time around, I found my own clinical experiences to bolster my application and make me more competitive. I basically crafted the work experience for myself and completed all the APPIC work on my own, without any input from my academic institution. I had 7 interviews and ranked 6, but still did not match. I try my best to strive past my poor decision to attend this program and move forward with a career that I actually believe I can make a difference and contribute to my clients and my field. But I can only do so much with what seems like an eternal stain on my degree.
This time around, I believe only 1 person matched APPIC the first round of roughly 10. There are a handful of other students also going for internship, but have bypassed APPIC all together and are focusing only on unaccredited CAPIC internships. I am in such a place of dissonance because it pains me to feed into the CAPIC system that I completely disagree with and hold some contempt for,but that I have turned to in order to complete my degree and start the steep uphill battle to prove that I am exceedingly better than the name that is on my diploma. While I grind away at the Phase II apps, my CAPIC rank floats in computer matching land and I may very well end up with a 3-4 tier internship at the end of the week.
Sorry that this was kind of longwinded. I felt I needed a little bit of venting time. To pull it back, I really do agree about having a larger piece of accreditation be related to accredited internship placement. My program would have it pulled fairly quickly if this was a major criterion. There's a place in my heart that hopes it does (although, maybe after I graduate, I mean I have to show a little self-preservation). And as I have said before on SDN, once I am past all this, I intend to be an advocate for the elimination of sub-par programs and will freely share my experience and opinions on the absurdity of their existence (or at least their existence in terms of it detrimentally impacting the greater field).
