one if the reasons DSWs were once popular was because the MSW was the terminal degree, and when social work decided to tread into the doctoral realm, PhDs were a hard sell for universities. Given that a DSW is a professional degree, it is a much easier program to develop and administer because it can skip a lot of the red tape that is paved along the PhD path. PhD's are normally granted and administered at the university level, not the department or school level, so all programs have general requirements they have to meet (i.e. GRE, selectivity, funding, etc.). With DSW's, they are created and administered solely by social work schools and departments, and thus have much more control over the coursework offered, etc. When doctoral programs were first introduced, no one knew what a PhD in social work was supposed to look like, so it was difficult to get the university graduate schools to sign off on them. So, universities created DSW programs instead.
This is also why DSW programs, like PsyD programs, don't have the same level of funding as PhD programs. Because PhD programs are administered through the university graduate school, they all compete for the same funding, across disciplines. With professional degrees, the only funding generally comes from the academic unit.
So, for example, my Alma Matter has a PhD program in social work. It took them nearly 25 years of work to get the program off the ground. The program, while being a social work Phd, is actually granted not by the school of social work, but by the university graduate school. This ensures that all PhD's from the university are on par with each other, regardless of discipline. The students complete their coursework through the school of social work, but the degree is actually administered through the university grad school. A DSW, on the other hand, would be solely administered by the school of social work, given that it is a professional degree. Similar to the MD.
