Category Archives: Advocacy

Fun with data: Internship Stipends, cost of living, and practicum hours

Many graduate students in clinical, counseling and school psychology programs are preparing applications to internship positions across the country this fall. The internship component has been a requirement to earn a doctoral degree in these programs for decades. And every year the American Psychological Association’s Commission on Accreditation (CoA) collects data on students in accredited doctoral and internship programs.

Let’s have some fun with those data!

The first chart shows the mean and standard deviation of stipends from APA accredited internships from 1998 to 2012. Click the chart to magnify it:

Since 1998, the mean stipend for clinical, counseling, and school psychology interns has increased steadily. In fact, the stipends one standard deviation below the mean have increased by almost $5,000. (Source.)

While internship stipends have generally been increasing, do they cover the cost of living? My second chart presents the percent change in the median internship stipend and the percent change in the consumer price index (CPI) from year to year:

As you can see, the percent change in median stipend amount is greater than the percent change in CPI for some years but not others. It seems that although many stipends cover the cost of living, the percent change in stipend amounts is not always in pace with this marker of inflation (source). The good news? The 1998 mean intern stipend, adjusted for inflation, still beats the amount one would expect to earn in adjusted dollars for 2012 by nearly $1,500.

The percent change in stipend amounts is not always in pace with this marker of inflation.

Beyond stipends, I decided to look at the trends in practicum hours reported by internship applicants. In particular, I wondered if the internship crisis was leading to greater accumulation of hours by students who desire to appear more competitive. This third chart shows practicum hours of applicants from 2006 to 2012, broken into supervision and assessment/intervention categories:

It appears that the trends in supervision and in assessment/intervention hours are similar between the APA mean (blue) and APPIC median (red) hours. If we look at the most recent data, it appears that median hours are increasing over time. Students applied to internships with 18% more intervention/assessment hours in the eight years between 2006 and 2013.

It appears that median hours are increasing over time.

(Sources: Mean practicum hours are reported by APA, though public release of data in this area ceased in 2010. Median hours are reported by the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers, or APPIC. It is important to note that APA accredits some doctoral and internship programs, almost all of which send students through the APPIC national match. APPIC data report students from accredited and unaccredited doctoral programs vying for accredited and unaccredited internships.)

Any thoughts on the data I presented? Are you surprised by the trends? Do any possible interpretations come to mind? I welcome you to comment on this post!

Spreading Awareness and Taking Action on the Internship Crisis

This spring, a group of APAGS members recorded a short video about the real struggles that doctoral students are facing as a result of the imbalance between internship applicants and positions — and how these struggles inform the field we care so deeply about. We hope that you can use this video as a tool to spread awareness of the internship crisis and catalyze solutions to ending it. Please watch it here:

When you click the link at the end of the video — http://on.apa.org/internshipcrisis — you are brought to a page with a number of awareness, advocacy, and action steps. The video shows that we have a large stake in the issue. The list of steps reveals that we have the skills and ability to do something about it!

APAGS intends for this video to be a stepping stone on the way to solving the internship crisis. Please share it amongst your friends, colleagues, and faculty. What did you think? What action will you take? Leave your comments on our blog.

Editor’s note: Todd Avellar is a doctoral student studying Counseling Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and was a Member at Large on the APAGS Committee through August 2014. Applications for APAGS subcommittee members are being accepted through 9/10/14.

Education should not be a “debt sentence”

Yesterday, on my fourth day of my high school fellowship in APAGS, I was able to sit in a Senate hearing about student debt and the adversities that come with it. Student debt is at a staggering $1.2 trillion which is highly unacceptable.

APAGS High School Fellow Damani Jasper outside of a Senate hearing on student debt.

At the hearing, a social studies teacher was emphasizing the financial struggles he is trying to overcome; he felt it was already bad enough that the cost of living in Washington, D.C. is so expensive, and now the loans he has to pay back only make his financial situation even worse. While his car loan has a 1.9% interest rate, his student loan interest rates are much higher. He also stressed his concerns about going into his thirties and not being able to start a family nor buy a house because he has so many student loans to pay back.

If you think that this high school teacher is struggling financially at a median salary of $55,050, then you can only imagine how much psychologists are struggling with more debt and an average salary of $69,280. Depending on the type of graduate degree, 48 to 89% of psychology students will graduate with debt. By the time they graduate, they will owe up to $120,000 if not more. That is a lot for someone who isn’t fully engaged into their career yet. Over 10 years, that $120,000 becomes $170K, and over 30 years of paying back loans, that becomes $280K (to add insult to injury, the interest rate is approximately 6.8%).

The debt sentence for psychologists can be up to 30 years—which is very overwhelming.

The setbacks that the student loans are bringing to people like this teacher and maybe some psychologists seem as if they are becoming unbearable. I hope that something can be done about the staggering debt of graduates.

My own thinking has led me to offer some possible solutions to reduce student debt:

Lowering interest rates to decrease the amount of money that a student will have to pay back. Congress should be proactive in lowering interest rates as well as tackling many other factors that play a role in student debt. I don’t believe it is appropriate for the government to make a profit off of students trying to get an education.
Misplaced money in the budget can be used to decrease student debt and even possibly to increase the amount of money that graduate students receive for campus work. (For example, it bothers me that the executive branch of the government plans to spend $640 billion on nuclear weapons that will probably never be used.)

It will be very wise to approach student debt as quickly as possible because it will only get worse with time. Hopefully, the people that make the decisions in our government will quickly do what is right and beneficial.

The cost of education should not be a debt sentence.

The hearing yesterday gave me a lot of insight on problems that I will encounter a decade from now if something isn’t done about student debt. It will cause too much financial stress on me and my family, and reluctance for my family to send the next generation to college, given what it is likely to cost. The cost of education should not be a debt sentence.

Editor’s note: Damani Jasper is a rising senior at a local high school that emphasizes public policy. He aspires to be an orthopedic surgeon. During his fellowship at APA he will be examining student debt and the connections between psychology and physical health.

Here’s one thing you can do #BringBackOurGirls

Bring Back our Girls. (Source: Studio d’Xavier on Flickr. Some rights reserved.)

Editor’s note: A full version of this post with more questions and expert answers appeared on APA’s Psychology Benefits Society blog on May 19th. Will you take action and send a message to congress to #BringBackOurGirls?

Psychology Benefits Society Bloggers: Many of us watching this horror unfold in Nigeria feel powerless. What can we do to help?

Nadine Kaslow, PhD, ABPP, 2014 APA President: This event reminds us that violence against women and girls is a global health crisis and a human rights violation that contributes to political and economic instability. We must work to end the abhorrent, widespread prevalence of gender-based violence around the world. You can take action by sending a message to Congress to support U.S. engagement to #BringBackOurGirls and to encourage Congress to pass the International Violence Against Women Act.

Bring Back our Girls. (Source: Studio d’Xavier on Flickr. Some rights reserved.)

Disability and diversity in graduate school training

Why is it that this population is often left off the page? Where is the training in disability competencies?

According to the United States Census Bureau, the number of people with disabilities in the United States is 56.7 million, or 18.6% of the population. That is more than the percentage identifying as Hispanic or Latino (16.9%) and as Black or African-American (13.1%), and may be an under-count because reporting disability on a census survey is tricky.

Whereas disability rates are high, chronic disease rates are higher. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that about half of all US adults (or 117 million people) have one or more chronic health conditions like heart disease, obesity, arthritis, diabetes, or cancer — and 25% have two or more such conditions.

Suffice to say, a lot of people with chronic illness and disability (CID) live in the US and make up its largest minority group. So why is it that in our discussions of multiculturalism, this population is often left off the page? Where is the training in disability competencies?

Disability is no longer the realm of the medical doctors. Regardless of which applied arm of the field you call home, whether it be health, rehabilitation, clinical, counseling, or school psychology, your clients will be people with disabilities. In fact, depending on where you are in the country, it is more likely you will work more with this population than any other minority group.

If you’re moved to learn more, start by asking yourself where you fall on the ability continuum, and what privileges this affords you. It was my realization of the privilege I held for my ability — more so than all other privileged identities I possess — that drove my passion for disability and rehabilitation competencies. One way that I develop these competencies outside of my program is through volunteer service in the community and at conferences and trainings. (On a side note, I believe disability advocates still have work to do to move CID closer to the fore even in those arenas that celebrate diversity, such as the biennial National Multicultural Conference and Summit, an excellent event held next January in Atlanta).

Recently, discussions and publications addressing intersectionality issues have incorporated disability a bit more, which is a great thing. At the same time, it is possible that the unique cultural aspects and experiences of individuals with CID get overlooked. Now is the time to advance the multicultural discussion to include disability as a diverse and cultural experience.

Please check out this great training video with Drs. Linda Mona and Julie Williams. Parts two and three of the video can be found — along with a host of other resources — at the APA Disability Issues Office webpage.

Disability as a Diversity Variable: A Call to Action within Psychology

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the topic and any experiences you may have had in disability competency training.

Editor’s note: Phillip Keck is a Counseling Psychology doctoral student at Ball State University and the APAGS liaison to the APA Committee on Disability Issues in Psychology.

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