For the past almost 30 years, increasing numbers of USA psychologists have 'earned' their graduate doctoral degrees from institutions that are known as "professional schools" that are not associated with or connected with accredited universities.  In fact, it should be stated early, that almost all of the doctoral degrees granted by psychology professional schools are what is known as Psy.D. degrees (i.e., Dr. of Psychology) whereas the doctoral degree granted to psychologists who completed their graduate work in Departments of Psychology in bona fide, accredited universities are the traditional and well known Ph.D. degrees (i.e., Ph.D.).  In my contact with my fellow psychologists during the past 42+ years (i.e., I received my Ph.D. in 1962), I have come into a great many contacts with both Psy.D. and Ph.D. psychologist degree holders.  In my perhaps limited contact with the overall psychologist population, I am strongly believing that the Ph.D. psychologists I have known generally show stronger graduate training backgrounds than the Psy.D. psychologist with whom I have had contact.  In fact, in my opinion, most of the Psy.D. psychologists with whom I have had contact, their expertise in psychology, broadly considered, seem to be about equal to the psychological expertise shown by those  Masters Degreed psychologists who entered the professional field of psychology in those years prior to the creation and introduction of psychology professional schools.   Although it almost seems that, in the field of psychology today, any expression of the kind of opinions stated above are just about what can be considered as "politically incorrect," finally some evidence supportive of the opinion is just now beginning to see the light.  The remainder of this presentation is to describe recently published research findings that support the contention that psychology professional schools produce psychologist products that, in reality, are inferior to those psychologist produced by the traditionally understood, university connected, academic Departments of Psychology.

     The 'trigger' for wanting to write this presentation can from a reading of the brief recent article by Templer and Arikawa (2004), although the initial origins came from a few earlier publications by Peterson (1997, 2003).  It should be stated here that Templer and some of his associates have also produced other articles and papers that also support the contention first publicly and loudly by Peterson.  Only a few selected research findings will be presently mentioned.

     For example, there appears to be highly significant differences between scores obtained on the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (known as the EPPP) by professional school psychologists and by university based  professional psychologists.  The EPPP is used by most states in examining psychologists for licensure.  The former have been seen to do obtain a number of EPPP scores (including the Total Score) that are significantly lower than the scores obtained by the latter group of psychologists.  When EPPP mean scores are compared for 183 different clinical psychology programs, it was observed that the top 59 mean scores all came from the so-called "traditional" programs and 18 of the lowest 19 mean scores came from the professional school programs.  Knowing this, it is not at all surprising to also learn that the passing rates for traditional program psychologists was much higher than for the professional school trained psychologists.    Additionally, it is not at all surprising to learn that diplomates of the American Board of Professional Psychology, presidents of state psychological associations, and directors of clinical internship agencies were far more likely to have traditional university based training backgrounds.  Considering only the information presented in this paragraph, it is not difficult to form an opinion that doctoral level psychologists who obtained their doctoral training in professional schools look to be something similar to 'second-class' psychologists when compared to psychologists doctorally trained in the more traditional university settings.

     The above represents only a short and incomplete description of the observed (obtained in objective and scientific-based investigations) differences between the discussed two differently trained psychologist groups.  Anyone wanting a more thorough and complete understanding of what is currently known on this subject, is urged to read the works listed in the references given at the close of the current presentation.

      In these well over four decades being a 'post-Ph.D.' professional psychologist, my last decade was almost exclusively devoted ot the practice of forensic psychology and in this activity I  encountered a great many forensic psychology examinations (in report form as well as involving court testimony) produced by other psychologists.  Some were the products of psychologists who professional training origins involved the traditional university type and some were the products of psychologists who had received their doctoral training (usually seen as holding the Psy.D. degree).  Almost without exception, forensic psychology reports and expert testimony coming from traditional psychologists were almost uniformly seen as being superior to that produced by the professional school psychologists.  In fact, a great deal of that produced by professional school psychologists, at least seen by this one forensic psychologist, could be regarded as coming from incompetent practitioners of what is known and seen as a separate psychology specialty, forensic psychology.  Unfortunately, what was frequently seen with many of these 'incompetent,' sometimes practicing as  forensic psychologists, is that they seemed to be unaware that they were incompetent!

     To be fair, it should be mentioned that some critical comments to the Peterson type findings has appeared in the psychological literature (e.g., Crossman, Horowitz & Morrison, 2004; Haffe, 2004; Kinkel, DeLeon, Abino & Porter, 2003), however their comments seem to be rather weak and sometimes inappropriate.  Crossman et al., for example, mentioned that professional school doctoral training "supports diversity" and that these schools "recognize the importance of a diverse community" because "diversity is important."  Such statements support a contention that perhaps one of the main reasons for the creation of psychology professional schools was to better provide training institutions for racial and other sociological/cultural minorities.  Somehow it seems rather easy to question whether creation of the concept of psychology professional schools, in order to foster professional training for racial and other cultural  groupings, is to  be encouraged.  In the past couple of years, since the semantic concept of "diversity" has essentially replaced the  previously used concept of  "racial quotas," it too has come to be evaluated as to whether such is good for our country in the long run.  After all, in the past couple of decades, look at what happened to the highly diverse countries of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and a number of other existing countries that have split into smaller countries along  different language, religious , and other ethnic lines.  Many are becoming very worried that the USA may, in the future, experience pressure  to divide into some fractionated form so as to 'fit' the country's recent emphasis upon diversity rather than unity.  The writer of this presentation can recall, earlier in his life, when Americans regarded themselves simply as being Americans and not some hyphenated American identification that seemingly promotes separateness more than unity in our Country's population.  Non hyphenated American identity had been the prevailing citizenship affiliation model successfully for so many years and quite clearly we were much more united in those past years.

     Kunkel et al. have presented some arguments against Peterson's reported findings, but a reading of Kunkel et al. will reveal some lack of their depth of argument.   Taffe (2004) argues that the two different types of psychological training are different because they were designed for two different types of trainees.    He describes that the basis for creation of the professional school was to "provide people available for service."  This implies that at that time, and perhaps now, there existed a shortage of doctorally trained psychologists in our society.  That may have been true way back when, but in more recent years, the earnings level for clinical (and other similarly trained professional psychologists) psychologists has not keep up with the salary levels for other  professional disciplines that require about the same number of years of training.  At the present time, it would not be a all difficult to argue that we most likely now have a surplus of doctorally trained psychologists.  We now see that the number of female graduate students have overtaken males graduate students in  psychology  doctoral training programs, as seems to be also somewhat true for the fields of law and medicine.  When a professional field or discipline becomes more female, there seems to be at least one result that occurs, without exception, and that is that the individual income level for that discipline levels off and more likely declines.  This is now taking place in the professional clinical (and related) psychology specialties.  The last thing the profession of psychology needs now is to have a large number of doctoral training programs that are turning out ever increasing numbers of psychologists.  With such a situation, one is reminded of  the wisdom and logic of Greshams's Law, namely that cheap money drives out the more valued good money.  It could be restated in the context of the currently discussed subject in that the growing existence of poorly trained psychologists will drive out the more favorably trained psychologists from the field of psychology!  Already, to some limited extent, this seems to be taking place.

     Therefore, in conclusion, it is suggested that any potential 'customers' or clients of clinical psychologists, especially those psychologists associated with forensic practice, be well advised to discover whether the psychologist(s) they might engage had his/her doctoral training origins in a traditional university based institution or in a some psychology professional school, unaffiliated with any accredited university.   Although, by itself, a client's selection of a traditionally trained psychologist does not absolutely guarantee psychologist competency, it does greatly improve one's chances for securing competent professional services.  To obtain the services of the "best," one would be wise to avoid those psychologists coming from doctoral training backgrounds involving psychology professional schools that are not clearly associated with fully accredited, bona fide, universities.

[Note - all of the expressed opinions, described in this presentation are those of the author, LeRoy A. Stone, Ph.D., and, as such, are not necessarily shared with other psychologists.  However, in my well over, four decades of being a doctorate-holding psychologist, I have intentionally tried to be mostly professionally involved with psychologists who earned heir psychology doctorates from departments of psychology in well-known accredited universities rather than those coming from psychology professional schools.  In such a  circle of psychologist colleagues, my past expressed opinions regarding the "second-class" status for psychologists whose doctoral origins had been in psychology professional schools, found a lot of agreement endorsement.  Unfortunately, the largest, and most major association of psychologists (which would be the American Psychological Association or APA and to which I have been a member since 1958) seeming, at least not at this time, would not agree with many, if not all, of the opinionated ideas expressed in this presentation.  It is believed that unless the trend, being that more and more psychologists are trained in psychology professional schools, is reversed, then some fields of applied psychological (i.e., mainly clinical and counseling) will lose increasing degrees of prestige and regard in future society.  Already, there have been strong signs, during the past 20-30 years, that the more scientifically oriented segment of psychologists have been attempting to 'split' from the ever larger growing professional psychology contingent.  Good examples of this have been the creation of the Psychonomic Society, back in the very early 1960's (to which I became a member in 1962),  and the American Psychological Society in 1988.]

Crossman, R. E., Horowitz, M., & Morrison, A. (2004) Intended consequences. American
   Psychologist, 59, 645-646.

Jaffe, D. T. (2004)  On the differences between academic research departments and
   professional schools. American Psychologist, 59, 647-648.

Kunkel, M. B., DeLeon, P. H., Albino, E. N., & Porter, N. (2003) Challenges to professional
   psychology education in the 21st  century. American Psychologist, 58, 801-805.

Pearson, D. R. (1997) Educating professional psychologists:  History and guiding conception. 
   Washington, DC:  American Psychological Association.

Pearson, D. R. (2003)  Unintended consequences:  Ventures and misadventures in the education 
   of professional psychologists, American  Psychologist, 58, 791-800.

Templer, D. I., &  Arikawa, H. (2004) Concerns about professional schools. American 
   Psychologist, 59, 846.
 

This presentation appears as an editorial article in the Electronic Journal of Forensic Psychonomics; this journal can be found at:  http://www.home.earthlink.net/~lastone2/journal.html