Accreditation — Whose Business Is It?

The announcement in this issue of the Observer that APS is convening a "Summit on Accreditation" may come as a surprise to many of our members. Why, you may be asking, is APS — the society for the science of psychology — getting involved in issues of accreditation of doctoral programs in professional psychology? That is the question members of the APS Graduate Education Committee have been grappling with over the past three years, and their conclusion is that scientific psychologists have every reason to be concerned about the current system of accreditation and its consequences for our discipline. Although the American Psychological Association (APA) accreditation system currently applies only to doctoral programs aimed at training clinical, counseling, or school psychologists, the process of accreditation affects graduate education in psychology as a whole in a number of ways.