GradPSYCH - March 2012 - (Page 41)

APA and APAGS are among the groups dedicated to finding ways to fix the internship imbalance. Here are five possibilities. bY RebeCCa a. ClaY solution: increase the number of internship slots Pros: With 804 applicants left without positions after the 2011 match, finding ways to add more slots seems like a nobrainer. The Council of Chairs of Training Councils (CCTC), its member councils and the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internships Centers (APPIC) are among the organizations working to make this happen. Cons: The sheer size of the problem makes this a partial solution, at best. “The number of sites would have to be increased by 1,000 to get an internship for everybody,” says Mike C. Parent, a University of Florida graduate student who has researched the internship imbalance problem. Another is the fact that there’s no guarantee that schools with low internship match rates won’t just continue to increase their admissions rates, perpetuating the problem. And creating new internship sites is also difficult, especially in this economic climate, says Catherine Grus, PhD, of APA’s Education Directorate. According to Grus, many sites have scaled back or even discontinued their internship programs because they can longer afford them. That’s true no matter where sites’ funding comes from, adds APPIC Chair Eugene D’Angelo, PhD. Federal, state and municipal programs depend on line items in already-strained budgets to cover the costs of training, for instance, while university counseling centers may rely on support from similarly struggling academic institutions. to reduce their class sizes until their match rates are acceptable. Cons: While Stedman and his colleagues argue that legal concerns are unfounded, others believe that antitrust laws restrict APA and other organizations from directly regulating the number of graduate psychology admissions. “We can’t regulate programs by telling them they can’t accept students,” says CCTC Chair Steve McCutcheon, PhD. “But we as a profession do have the ability to expect that programs provide training that’s of sufficient quality so that students can fulfill their training requirements, move on to licensure and provide safe services to the public.” That’s why members of CCTC keep an eye on programs with low match rates and work with training directors to improve them, he says. solution: take away accreditation for lowmatching schools Pros: Some have called for limiting APA accreditation to doctoral programs with an acceptable match rate — 80 percent or 90 percent, for example — which could then spur schools to tighten admission standards. In a 2007 article in Training and Education in Professional Psychology, for instance, Marie Miville, PhD, of Teachers College, Columbia University, called for restricting accreditation of counseling psychology programs to those with a 90 percent match rate. Cons: While Parent advocates an 80 percent cutoff, he admits such cutoffs could potentially harm small programs that take only a few students per year. Say a program takes only four students, and one doesn’t match because of geographical limitations, resulting in a 75 percent match rate, he points out. APA’s Commission on Accreditation could give special consideration to programs in such situations, he suggests. solution: force doctoral programs with low match rates to reduce their size Pros: Attacking the demand side of the equation is another common proposal. In a 2009 paper in Training and Education in Professional Psychology, for example, James M. Stedman, PhD, of the University of Texas Health Science Center and colleagues called for APA to force graduate programs with low match rates solution: require ‘truth in advertising’ from graduate programs Pros: On the theory that well-informed students may gradPSYCH • March 2012 • 41 

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of GradPSYCH - March 2012

GradPSYCH - March 2012
Contents
Psychology practicums reflect the field’s growth
How evidencebased is your trauma treatment?
Media Picks
Chair’s Corner
Odd Jobs
Research Roundup
Chart your own adventure
Matters to a Degree
Killer apps
The oil spill’s reverberations
A student of synchrony
Literature reviews made easy
Absentee advisers
What’s behind the internship match crisis?
Potential solutions
Steps to the match
Bulletin Board
Jobs, internships, postdocs and other opportunities
The Back Page

GradPSYCH - March 2012

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