Internship Match System Changes

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Definitely seems like a move in the right direction. As the article mentions the big step would be to change licensing laws. Similarly big is to tie accreditation to match rates.

I think its crazy that there isn't already an educational site that explains to applicants the pitfalls of high debt, large cohorts, and poor match rates. Hopefully, that can be running soon.
 
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Don't get me wrong, the accredited programs only is a step in the right direction. But will it help that much? I thought a big issue is that most of the bad programs ARE accredited.
 
The total number of students who did not match to a site is under reported in the article. They cite 788, but if you actually look at the data the 788 were the # that went through with ranking and did not match, but they excluded the 367 students who registered but ultimately withdrew or didn't submit a rank list. I'm sure there were a handful that withdrew for administrative reasons or similar, but I'd guess that a large % withdrew bc they didn't receive interviews and didn't have sites to rank*. There are also those students who completely forego the match process and seek out an independent site or go through CAPIC or similar. Those last data aren't easily captured, but they should at least be mentioned in the article because it amounts to possibly hundreds of students that aren't being counted.

*technically a person can rank a site if they didn't interview there, but the chances of the site ranking a person they didn't interview is extremely low.
 
Therapist4Chnge said:
Those last data aren't easily captured, but they should at least be mentioned in the article because it amounts to possibly hundreds of students that aren't being counted.
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that is a very good point and one that APA probably does not want to underscore. Similarly, at this point more than half of all clinical psych students are not receiving a full accredited (program + internship) education.
 
cara susanna said:
Don't get me wrong, the accredited programs only is a step in the right direction. But will it help that much? I thought a big issue is that most of the bad programs ARE accredited.
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I agree that it's certainly a step in the right direction (good for APAGS for bringing it up, and it's shameful that of all the groups present, it was the graduate students who had to make the push for APA's own training standard being the true minimum bar).

Perhaps one way it would indirectly affect the issue with questionable programs being accredited is that if accredited internships become required, then the less-than-stellar programs would no longer be able to churn students out into unaccredited spots. This might then force them to restrict class sizes and/or go under (eventually).

That being said, what's probably just as likely to happen is that the internship site standards could end up being relaxed to allow many of the doctoral programs to stay afloat.
 
AcronymAllergy said:
I agree that it's certainly a step in the right direction (good for APAGS for bringing it up, and it's shameful that of all the groups present, it was the graduate students who had to make the push for APA's own training standard being the true minimum bar).

Perhaps one way it would indirectly affect the issue with questionable programs being accredited is that if accredited internships become required, then the less-than-stellar programs would no longer be able to churn students out into unaccredited spots. This might then force them to restrict class sizes and/or go under (eventually).

That being said, what's probably just as likely to happen is that the internship site standards could end up being relaxed to allow many of the doctoral programs to stay afloat.
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I'd also like to see an end to "captive" internship sites. I feel like it's unfair to not allow all students to apply to some sites, and only artificially inflates some programs' match numbers.
 
LETSGONYR said:
I'd also like to see an end to "captive" internship sites. I feel like it's unfair to not allow all students to apply to some sites, and only artificially inflates some programs' match numbers.
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I actually personally don't have a problem with the captive sites, assuming they offer the same level/standard of training as any other site, as they help to alleviate the burden on other internship programs (and the match process as a whole). Heck, if all programs were able (and/or forced) to offer captive sites for all of their students, the imbalance would theoretically disappear.
 
AcronymAllergy said:
I actually personally don't have a problem with the captive sites, assuming they offer the same level/standard of training as any other site, as they help to alleviate the burden on other internship programs (and the match process as a whole). Heck, if all programs were able (and/or forced) to offer captive sites for all of their students, the imbalance would theoretically disappear.
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Eh, I feel like you can't have it both ways.

If people are advocating for programs with <50% match rates (or any other cutoff) to lose accreditation, then having captive internships is just an artificial way to ensure the program maintains accreditation, even if their program isn't up to par. If that internship site was available to everyone, then the site would get to choose the best applicants- and the subpar programs would still be under than cutoff.
 
LETSGONYR said:
Eh, I feel like you can't have it both ways.

If people are advocating for programs with <50% match rates (or any other cutoff) to lose accreditation, then having captive internships is just an artificial way to ensure the program maintains accreditation, even if their program isn't up to par. If that internship site was available to everyone, then the site would get to choose the best applicants- and the subpar programs would still be under than cutoff.
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This is why I feel it's critical that captive internships are held to the same training standards as any other site. If that's the case, and if the captive site is accredited, then I don't know that I would view it as artifically inflating the program's match numbers; after all, the program is then the one footing the bill, so theoretically they need to limit the number of spots to folks that they can afford to train.

Heck, having that direct link could actually end up providing multiple benefits throughout grad school, although there'd need to be some type of delineation in the role of a grad student vs. intern.
 
True. Though from what I understand about captive internships (my program doesn't have them), they do not have enough spots to cover everyone in the program, and people from the programs still apply to mainstream internship sites.
 
LETSGONYR said:
True. Though from what I understand about captive internships (my program doesn't have them), they do not have enough spots to cover everyone in the program, and people from the programs still apply to mainstream internship sites.
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I can certainly appreciate the idea that if the program, say, doesn't fill all of the captive spots, then they should perhaps be required to then offer them in phase 2 and/or as part of the post-match vacancy process. Like you mentioned, things get messy when some internships are captive while others (i.e., the vast majority) are not. I honestly don't have a good/fair solution off the top of my head.
 
DynamicDidactic said:
very nice. Nice to see at least one SDNer contributed to that site.

Just skimming through the site it looks pretty good. I wish there was some more info on empirical data that shows some of the downsides of large cohort programs.
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Thanks for posting this. I just finished internship and moving for my job, so I've been unable to promote the site as much as I'd like to have. I will do it before moving to Hawaii now that I'm done internship and can just sit on my balcony and work 🙂

We tried to take an optimally balanced approach to talking about training programs, without telling anyone what to do. There are many people who enter large cohort programs with good, thoughtful ideas for their future and do great. We were trying to spark thought among folks who think they can pay off $200k in debt, making $50k a year, in 4 years.
 
I think on the whole the website does a great job. The debt information is good.

However, I also think that there isn't enough warning about large cohort programs.

The website seems to ask students to put all of this together when they probably won't - when I read through the Myths section, I saw some things that I think might give students the wrong idea. For example - saying "rankings don't matter" and "most programs are competitive" could help that potential Argosy student justify their decision to not consider programs elsewhere (if almost all of them are good anyways, right!).

Large cohort programs often have a poor reputation (low standards for admission, etc), do a disservice to the field by accepting too many students (poor stewardship to the profession given our over-supply), and often do all of this for profit and place this crippling debt on students.

I recognize that it is hard to paint broad strokes with this, and that a website like this probably can't call out specific programs. But without somehow connecting the class size/debt/supply vs. demand issues, I fear that a lot of potential students won't understand the risks.
 
Jon Snow said:
I agree, Pragma. But, this site does get the information out there in a way that does cover the bases. I had a similar reaction to the rankings issue. Perhaps that section could be expanded/clarified. E.g. In clinical programs, rankings by organizations like USA today are not always necessarily indicative of program strength. Rather, the strength of the program is better reflected by the presence of well known faculty, grant money, population access, etc. perhaps a guide on an approach to gather information about a program beyond what is presented on a program website.
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Yeah, that's what was meant. I see now the wording was weird ("reputation" for shorthand instead of rankings by magazines). Fixing now. 🙂
 
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