this was a posting i placed on a yahoo group, where we were debating the relative value of professional licensure and the licensure laws that exist in the u.s. versus other countries. again, i thought readers here might find it interesting:
"by way of background, i have both bachelor's and master's degrees in social work, with ten years of job experience in between the time i finished my bachelor's and started my master's, and now almost fifteen more years of work experience since being awarded my second degree.
"as a person who thinks and feels deeply and has had a number of interesting and challenging life experiences (beginning from the time i popped out of my mother's womb, i might add), i found much of the study material required to earn my bachelor's degree to be "common sense" and stuff that i could learn from independent reading and attending professional and personal growth workshops, and just plain living.
"then after getting my bachelor's degree, i worked on treatment teams in a myriad of settings with a tremendous variety of clients and patients who brought diverse problems and diagnoses to the table. members of these teams included psychiatric nurses, master's level professionals, doctoral level psychologists as well as psychiatrists, all of whom were licensed and/or certified in their fields. i found that the piece of paper and credentials that one holds do not necessarily mean anything in terms of one's ability to effectively and empathically engage with and treat clients/patients. frankly, i was often appalled at the conduct of my colleagues, vis-a-vis each other and toward those same clients/patients.
"at one point i was working in an organization that paid licensed professionals much higher salaries than unlicensed professionals, and i happened to be living in a jurisdiction that offered a license for bachelor's level social workers. i discovered that i was eligible for this “salary benefit" at the company. five years after getting my BSW, i skimmed through my undergraduate textbooks over the course of two weeks, took the exam, passed in the 96th percentile, and got a salary increase of 40%, all in one fell swoop. licensed or unlicensed, i was greatly respected by my coworkers and superiors for my clinical skills, and although most of my master's level peers resented it, my work was frequently acknowledged over theirs.
"that turn of events finally put me in a financial position to return to school to do my master’s. master's programs in social work generally allow advanced placement for bachelor's level social workers, since the first year is designed for students who have not had previous academic learning in the social work field. students with immeasurably less life, work and educational experience - i have always been a firm believer of continuing education and development, and have pursued it whether i was required to do so by a licensing board or not - were allowed to skip the first year, yet i was denied advance placement for the simple reason that it had been more than five years since i had earned my bachelor's degree. this was despite the fact that i had earned my bachelor's level license within the previous five years and had been working in the real world for the past ten years; there were absolutely no exceptions. (of course, i enquired.) and i’m not talking about a well-recognized school here. talk about having to jump through ridiculous, bureaucratic hoops.
"in graduate school, so much of the information presented by the professors, who in many cases had been out of the work world for years if not decades if they had ever been outside of academia at all, was slightly off or just plain wrong (names and side effects of psychotropic medications, for example) that i often felt like i was co-teaching my courses, particularly during the first year. although some of my professors undoubtedly found me annoying, my fellow students enjoyed being in class with me, feeling like they learned so much more. some professors would even call on me to help them address the questions of other students.
"based on some of the comments and questions i heard in class from some of my student colleagues, particularly in reference to their internship (i.e, real world) experiences, i couldn't believe they were being graduated as master's level social workers. for example, some of their comments revealed gross ignorance about other peoples, places, cultures, religions, etc, if not outright ethnocentricism, and incredible naivite and preconceptions and stereotypes about what makes people tick (or not). yet they were duly passed on through, because they technically made the grades, and most internship supervisors don't have the guts to flunk students.
"meanwhile, one of my internships was so cushy and i was was given so little to do that i saw no legitimate reason to stick rigidly to the hard-and-fast 50-minute per session rule. my supervisor, who would call it a stressful day if she saw more than two clients and would otherwise sit in front of the door to the corridor where anyone passing by could hear her, making fun of clients, literally threatened to flunk me because of that. she even went so far as to official writing me up. how twisted is that? granted, she was probably a lot more bothered by my not giving adequate weight to her concerns about it, but still, i thought it a bit much. i duly became rigid about the 50-minute therapeutic hour.
"shortly after graduate school i moved to california, where there was an ongoing controversy over the oral portion of the licensure exam for social workers. after having said all that i have said so far, i must admit that i fully supported the existence of the second exam, much to the dismay of many of my colleagues. i supported it because i had seen so much incompetence among my professional peers and those with supposedly "higher" education and credentials than i had, and had heard so many of what i will call "horror stories" from clients about their past therapists (and i am referring here to conduct that was clearly actionable by legal or other authorities, not stuff that 'in my opinion ...'), that i felt like one more hoop was the least we as a profession could require of potential new members before they became licensed as psychotherapists.
"ironically enough, by that time i was doing a lot of administrative work and didn't prioritize getting licensed for so long that the oral exam questions were incorporated into the written exam and the separate oral portion was abolished by the board by the time i actually took the integrated licensure exam. so, lucky for me, that was one less hoop that i personally had to pass through.
"i hope that i haven't sounded arrogant or full of myself herein; that really isn't my style. my intention is to simply report my lived experience, as it relates to these topics. my apologies to all of the hard-working, ethical, qualified mental health professionals on the list; obviously, none of this is about you, and none of it was meant to be taken personally. as far as i know, none of you were my professors, instructors, student colleagues, or coworkers!
"my point in all this is: i agree that we must have standards in the profession, and that we must hold people to those standards; and as proud as i am of my licensure and as dearly as i hold and uphold it, i also agree that licensing and credentialing are not necessarily the be-all and end-all, in the u.s. or in any other place in the world.
"that's a bit of my story, and i'm sticking to it. :-)"
