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. The most direct influence, of course, is on the content and curriculum of the professional training programs themselves. However, when these programs are housed in departments of psychology, there is considerable interdependence between the accredited programs and educational programs in all other areas of psychology. Accreditation requirements affect the distribution of resources across different programs, the use of faculty time, and the priorities of graduate students in our departments.

The scope of accreditation has expanded dramatically since APA accredited it first clinical programs in 1948. Today, more than 250 doctoral programs are accredited, a large proportion of which are not the traditional scientist-practitioner training program housed within department of psychology in universities. As the same standards and procedures for accreditation have been extended to accommodate newer, more professionally oriented training programs, many feel that the scientist­practitioner model is being undermined by the very system of quality control that was originally designed to promote it.

Accreditation has also become the “coin of the realm” for career in clinical research affecting access to internships, license to practice, and even many academic jobs. In that context, control of the accreditation system affords control of graduate education in the discipline. It was with that concern in mind that some members of the APS Graduate Education Committee met with representatives from the Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology (COGDOP) in November 1989 to discuss strategies for altering the governance of accreditation, which is currently administered by APA exclusively. A proposal, which was endorsed by both APS and COGDOP, called for the creation of a new joint commission for governing the policies and procedure of accreditation — a commission appointed by APA and COGDOP but existing outside of the governance structure of either organization.

Two years of effort and negotiation between COGDOP and APA failed to result in any significant change in the structure of accreditation. In August 1991, APA’s Council of Representatives passed a motion to alter the composition of the Committee on Accreditation to include representation from COGDOP and national organizations of training directors, but ultimate control over composition of the committee and accreditation policy remained with APA Council. The interests of educational institutions and scientific psychologists are still not well represented in the accreditation structure.

With these developments, the APS Committee on Graduate Education appointed a subcommittee on accreditation to assess concerns about the present system. The subcommittee contacted department chairs and training directors in large research universities and learned that dissatisfaction is widespread but that individual departments feel relatively helpless in the face of a well­entrenched accreditation structure. It was on that basis that the members of the subcommittee concluded that there was need for a forum in which department representatives could get together to share their concerns and consider alternatives to the present system of accreditation.

The subcommittee recommended to the APS Board that it would be appropriate for APS to convene such a meeting, and the Board agreed. Ideas for the goal and format of the meeting came from the model provided by the successful behavioral science “summit” meetings convened by APS. In previous summits, national organizations for psychological science met to consider issues of funding for research and ultimately produced the outline for a national research agenda for psychological science. With that model in mind, the new “accreditation summit” will be convened in Chicago in April, with invitations to all university-based departments of psychology with accredited doctoral programs to send representatives. The summit will address fundamental questions regarding accreditation: ls accreditation necessary? What alternatives are there to the current accreditation structure? What are the costs and risks associated with pursuing alternatives?

A steering committee consisting of myself, Richard Bootzin, Emanuel Donchin, Richard Weinberg, and Virginia O’Leary (COGDOP Executive Committee representative) will oversee planning and conduct of the meeting. We are hopeful that the summit will provide a forum not only for discussion and information exchange but also for joint action.

Accreditation is our business, and it is time to bring it back under control.