Jim - Yes, well put. My primary concern, which you've explained well, is that the increasingly common practice among clinical Ph.D. programs of accepting only students who wish to pursue academic/research careers may inadvertently widen the already wide science-practice gap. Clinically oriented students who are scientifically minded or at least open to scientific approaches (and yes, many such students do exist) will instead go largely to Psy.D. programs where, as Jim notes, they will typically receive training that is not scientifically rigorous (there are a few honorable exceptions among Psy.D. programs, like Rutgers, Argosy in DC, and perhaps Denver, as Annette observes, but in my experience these are outliers).
An argument I've made in my own clinical program, with minimal success, is that our field desperately needs scientiifically-minded practitioners to deliver evidence-based interventions, serve as scientific role models for their fellow clinicians, supervise graduate students in scientifically-grounded assessment and treatment techniques, offer continuing education workshops that integrate science with practice, and so on. I very much worry that the current trend of discouraging scientifically-minded students who aspire to practice careers from applying to clinical Ph.D. programs will deprive the field of practitioners who have received high quality scientific training. But at the risk of being cynical, most of my academic colleagues here and at other research-oriented clinical psychology programs are less concerned about the future of the field at large than with the success of their own research activities. That's where the reinforcement contigencies lie. These faculty members want research-oriented students to staff and run their laboratories and help them with their grant-funded research, so the current admissions system works well for them. But we may pay a price in the long run. .....Scott ________________________________________ From: Jim Clark [j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca] Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2011 12:30 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: RE: [tips] Clinical training: Boulder and Denver Hi James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca >>> "Lilienfeld, Scott O" <slil...@emory.edu> 11-Sep-11 7:36:26 AM >>> But more and more, Boulder model programs are discouraging students with primary career interests in clinical practice from applying for graduate school, largely because dozens and dozens of Psy.D programs are already available to do that (and there's no research evidence that Ph.D.s are associated with superior therapy outcomes to Psy.D.s). Also, the costs of graduate training at most clinical psychology programs are enormous (e.g., at Emory, we fund offer guaranteed funding for 4 years, with full tuition remissiion, about a $17,000 a year stipend, coverage of health insurance and other fees; and our clinical program is not markedly atypical from other clinical Ph.D. programs), and many graduate programs do not want to invest >$100,000 and years of research training in a student who will go out and perform full-time therapy, especially when there is no evidence (and pretty good evidence to the contrary from meta-analyses) that their treatment outcomes will be superior to those of B.A. level paraprofessionals (I have decidedly mixed feelings about this argument, but take it for what it is). JC One potential downside to this division is that it would appear to give up on the possibility that in the future psychological practice might have stronger scientific foundations that require a deeper understanding of human behavior and experience than can be transmitted in an undergraduate degree or even in a PsyD (especially as currently constituted). It is hard to draw complete parallels with other professions that do not have PhDs as the top professional degree, but MDs do differ from Nurses, Dentists differ from Dental Hygenists, and so on. Psychological practice based on an undergraduate degree would appear to place psychology on par with Social Workers and Occupational Therapists. And the shortcomings in the current versions of PsyDs, as alluded to by Scott, means perhaps that PsyDs are not a lot better than undergraduate degrees (my interpretation, not necessarily Scott's). Another problem is that we relinquish training of practitioners to institutions that are generally less completely scientific than university psychology departments and that are probably outright anti-scientific in some cases. What does that augur for the future interface between the Clinical Scientists and Practitioners? To again draw an analogy with Medicine, would the results of research in the medical field be less likely to be disseminated and adopted widely if the researchers were not trained initially as practitioners? Indeed, it even seems at least unusual to think of, for example, a Prostate Cancer research centre that was not headed by a medical practitioner and that did not also serve as a primary treatment centre. Take care Jim --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: slil...@emory.edu. 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