From the UC Berkeley Clinical Science Website (emphasis added):
“The Clinical Science program at the University of California, Berkeley is committed to training clinical psychologists who are prepared to make significant contributions to basic research on mental illness and well-being; to the development, evaluation, delivery, and dissemination of new assessments and treatments to diverse populations; and to reducing the burden of mental illness and related problems in living. Increasingly, we view the evolving curricular and other demands associated with APA accreditation as inconsistent with this approach to training.”
Anybody have specifics on the highlighted text?
One example of a revised seemingly reasonable APA requirement that has a snowball effect of procedural headaches and excessive time:
APA requires more extensive documentation demonstrating how you train students in each of their accreditation domains. Reasonable, right?
BUT...
Anytime you claim to train students, you must document outcomes and demonstrate proper training. Again, reasonable.
BUT...
Let's say a domain is addressed in different ways throughout courses; in fact, this is pretty common. For example, a number of clinical courses integrate training on Cultural & Individual Differences & Diversity.
APA's language and increasingly strict interpretation of its criteria now means:
--Every course that includes this component must evaluate each student on this domain specifically. This means an instructor is now not just assessing you in the course but on each domain declared part of training.
--They must demonstrate how they do this. Passing the course is not enough, because you must show whether someone could pass the course while "failing" the cultural component (definitely possible).
--What's the remediation plan in the course?
--What's the remediation plan within the program?
--How are those remediation plans developed and evaluated?
--What does the program do if they don't have documented assessment of that domain for that course?
It goes on and on. Keep in mind above, we're only talking about one course and one domain... and if ONE professor doesn't document and formally assess that domain in their class, you're no longer in compliance and risk your accreditation. Early outcomes on APA accreditation decisions post-revised requirements suggest little room for error (had a sharp rise in programs put on probation for not being in compliance with a regulation).
Now imagine all the hours a program can spend developing these plans, documenting them, executing them, adhering to them, etc. for each course and then doing the same for how these get weighted in the total program evaluation. Now multiply that by all the other issues you need documentation for.