If it is indeed 30,000, that just seems so unreasonable. I mean...most PsyD programs are pricey, as we all know. The ones that I am applying to are all aprox 23,000/year, with a much smaller fee charged during dissertation and internship years. While this is still pricey, I can't imagine wanting to pay what PGSP charges. For what?
I guess as the only PGSP (PhD program) grad here, I'm the only one who can probably answer. I'm guessing that the *relative* value for your dollar that PGSP gets you is the access to the Palo Alto VA training slots and the 'celebrity' faculty. And reasonably good match rates for internship. And reasonably good training, for a professional school (which seems to be the consensus in this thread, which I don't disagree with).
Look, I'm not going to be the one to melodramatically rail about the ridiculous tuition PGSP charges (complete with analogizing to relationships with domestic abusers), I'll leave that to the funded program students and grads, seems to be their job.
PGSP and other professional schools like them charge the tuition they charge because that's what the market will bear - the highly, hugely distorted market that it is (owed entirely to the torrents of federally guaranteed loan money out there).
Yes, these schools are insanely expensive. Yes, students that graduate from these programs have debt that will follow them much of their working lives. It seems economically irrational to make the choice that professional school students do. But we do - and will continue to as long as all that federally-guaranteed loan money is out there, and there are accredited (and I guess, unaccredited) programs out there to take it.
Maybe we choose to go to professional schools not because we expect to reap great financial rewards? Maybe the value is in getting to go to work every day and do something we enjoy?
For my part, my wife went to a considerably less expensive graduate program, a relatively well-regarded (2nd tier) law school, got in roughly half the debt I did, and frankly, up until recently, was making far more money than I was, much earlier on. But you know what? She's miserable. She hates her work. She makes great money but she works 50-60 hours a week, never gets to see her kids, and her partners are abusive (*actually* abusive, not metaphorically). It sucks. In fact, it sucks so much we're actually having serious discussions about her quitting the legal field entirely and finding something else to do. Which I support - it's a bummer having my wife so depressed by her job.
Then there's me. My debt level is about twice hers, but I actually enjoy my work. My boss is very supportive, I get 25% "professional development" time, I like learning about new things to make me better at what I do, and I really, really enjoy the field I'm in. Sure, about 10-15% of my take-home pay is swallowed up by student loan payments (more on the latter end of that figure now that I've decided to go part time and be home with the kids more), but I really, really have trouble imagining what I would have done for a career had I not gone into this line of work. No one in my family has ever been an entrepreneur. I never wanted to go to medical school. I would have been miserable as a lawyer (even more so than my wife). This was the only career left standing for me.
Should I have waited and tried to strategize how to get into a funded program? Sure. I never got any guidance about this, but it would have been great if I had, assuming my wife would have had the patience for such a thing. But what's done is done. For my part, the benefits of having attended a professional school are obvious, now - I have job security (VA job), considerable job satisfaction, and even with my student loan debt, I make more money than I ever have in my life. These are all pluses.
So, while I think it's really useful to have a level-headed discussion about the pros and cons of professional schools in psychology, including the many cons (which are oft-discussed around here, and I certainly won't deny), I think the players in this ongoing discussion would have much more credibility if they also acknowledged the pros, and avoid such one-sided vitriol about professional schools. Not because the criticisms are unjustified, but because you're not really doing anyone any favors, I'm guessing, by offering such one-sided broadsides to the pro-school model. Maybe I'm wrong - but I just don't see the typical tenor of the discussions here changing that many minds.
So, anyways, continue....... just my 2 cents.
It was a melodramatic analogy, yes, but "offensive," come on man, get some thicker skin. You are gonna have patients and supervisors, yes supervisors, say much worse than that during your training. I think the great Charlton Heston once said "Political correctness is tyranny with manners."
