Some Impediments to MSW Student Satisfaction

Impediments to MSW Satisfaction 1

Some Impediments to MSW Student Satisfaction

Special Studies (SW598)

University of Michigan

School of Social Work

Ray Woodcock

May 2, 2010


A master’s degree in social work (MSW), earned in a graduate program accredited by the

Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), can offer “a broad range of skills, tools, and

knowledge that prepares [the student] for advanced social work” (University of Michigan, 2009).

The process of completing that (or any) educational program should be subject to regular

examination, to determine whether it can more efficiently or fully achieve its purpose. Student

dissatisfaction can identify particular areas needing improvement.

These are relatively straightforward and noncontroversial propositions; yet they are not

easy to put to use. This paper addresses several barriers to execution. The discussion begins

with a review of a few prominent definitions of the social work profession and of relevant views

of various stakeholders in MSW education, in a bid to identify the central purpose(s) of that

education. In response to the divergent concepts of MSW education stated or implied in those

various perspectives, the paper proposes its own formulation of the purpose of MSW education.

It is then suggested that, in fact and/or in conscious experience, significant portions of the

student body find that, in certain regards, SSWs themselves frustrate the pursuit of that purpose.

The paper concludes with questions for further investigation.

Divergent Views of the Purpose of MSW Education

MSW education is education in the social work profession. It would seem, then, that the

purpose or mission of the profession must be central to the purpose of MSW education. On that

basis, one might consult the opinions of leading social work organizations regarding the mission

of social work. The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) is one such organization.

According to the NASW (2008),

The primary mission of the social work profession is [a] to enhance human

wellbeing and [b] help meet the basic human needs of all people, with


[c] particular attention to the needs and empowerment of people who are

vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty.

The CSWE is another such organization; however, it does not phrase the mission of the

profession in quite the same way. According to the CSWE’s (2010, p. 1) Educational Policy

(sic) and Accreditation Standards (EPAS),

[a] The purpose of the social work profession is to promote human and commun-

ity well-being. [b] Guided by a person and environment construct, a global

perspective, respect for human diversity, and knowledge based on scientific

inquiry, [c] social work’s purpose is actualized through its quest for social and

economic justice, the prevention of conditions that limit human rights, the

elimination of poverty, and the enhancement of the quality of life for all persons.

The NASW (2008) thus states two missions. Its clause (a) arguably matches the CSWE’s

(2010) clause (a); but after that, the best one can say is that the two seem to be talking about

similar concerns and yet not saying exactly the same things about them. For instance, the

CSWE’s clause (c) says that the purpose of the profession is “actualized” through four different

kinds of efforts. Does that mean that promoting human and community well-being (the stated

purpose in clause (a)) means only, and exactly, those four kinds of efforts? And among those

four, what about “the prevention of conditions that limit human rights” – what does that entail?

Human rights lawyers, for example: are they part of the social work profession? It might be

possible to add explanations, caveats, and other verbiage, so as to make these two mission

statements clear and compatible with one another. Doing so would tend, however, to call into

question their quality as mission statements (see Williams, 2008). At best, it could seem that the

two statements are working toward consensus, but have not yet reached it.


Even if the NASW and the CSWE arrive at a consensus definition of the social work

profession, however, there would remain the uncomfortable fact that neither of them, nor even

the two of them collectively, actually represent that profession. By its very name, the CSWE is

oriented toward social work education, not toward the entire profession. It boasts about 3,000

individual members (CSWE, 2009). The NASW (2010), for its part, claims 150,000 members,

but federal government sources indicate that there were at least 642,000 employed social workers

in the U.S. in 2008 (BLS, 2010); elsewhere, the U.S. Census Bureau (2009, Table 603) estimates

729,000 employed social workers in that same year. Even using the lower figure, it seems the

NASW does not speak for even a quarter of the nation’s social workers. Moreover, those who

do become NASW members surely are not representative of the whole. For one thing, NASW

takes positions that many social workers reject (below). NASW memberships also cost money,

and poorly paid social workers seem likely to hesitate for that reason. In addition, people who

are thinking of leaving the profession, or who got social work degrees but never entered it

(possibly because of their educational experiences), as a rule are not going to buy NASW

memberships. How many such people there are is not known, but there is some disturbing

research on the question. Wermeling (2006) found that 44% of the MSWs she surveyed had left

or were considering leaving the profession.1 Given the prospect of better incomes elsewhere, it

is likely that a substantial fraction of that percentage did so; that is, there could easily be 100,000

social workers who are not employed in the profession. Meanwhile, in the mid-aughts (i.e., from

2002 to 2008), the available information seems to suggest an addition of at least 10,000 social

1 Siebert (2005) found that 39% of practicing social workers were experiencing burnout at the time of her

survey, and that 75% had experienced burnout at some point in their careers. Wermeling (2009) indicates, in fact, that the very definitions of these terms (including “social worker”) are unclear, and suggests that “[A] study of social workers not employed within the profession and their possible disaffection with the profession seems long overdue.”


workers per year.2 Yet NASW membership evidently dropped during that period; it was

reportedly over 155,000 in 2002 (Thyer, 2002, p. 3). Note, finally, that some social workers and

social work organizations have adopted decidedly non-NASW stances (e.g., Rosenwald, 2006;

NABSW, n.d.). In short, it is very unlikely that the NASW’s mission statement represents the

consensus of people trained in social work, or even of people currently employed in social work.

Mission statements typically speak for an organization, not for an entire profession (see

Woodcock, 2008, p. 582). If these statements by the NASW and the CSWE are therefore more

appropriately construed as mission statements for their own organizations, there is no longer a

problem; one would expect different organizations to have different purposes. The NASW’s

(2008) statement of its mission then has only indirect relevance to the purpose of social work

education: its strictures may apply to various interactions within SSWs, but the NASW does not

attempt to regulate MSW education directly. Likewise, if the CSWE’s (2010) statement is

construed as a summary of its own mission rather than of the entire profession, then its

importance derives, not from its present positioning as a preambulatory dictum apropos of

nothing, but rather as an integral component of Educational Policy (EP) 1.0, which is the only EP

that cites it. Further, when translated into the more articulated form of Accreditation Standard

(AS) 1.0, EP 1.0 requires only that an MSW program’s mission and goals “reflect” and be

“consistent with” that preambulatory mission statement.

The CSWE’s 2001 EPAS actually did state the purposes of the social work profession,

and of social work education, in EPs 1.0 and 1.1 – not, that is, in the preamble. The 2001 EPAS

2 This question is not addressed in detail here. BLS reportedly estimated a total of 477,000 employed

social workers in 2002 (Robiner, 2006, p. 608). Even using the lower of the two figures cited in the text (above), a rise from 477,000 to 642,000 over a six-year period implies the addition of 27,500 social workers per year. There would be 10,000 new social workers per year even if the nation’s 400+ programs of social work education averaged only 25 graduates each. Some definitions may include practitioners without degrees in social work, who may or may not have been eligible for NASW membership in any case during those years.


stated, not one, but six purposes of the profession, along with three purposes of social work

education. Collectively, the several EPAS of the early 21st century have inspired a variety of

statements of the purpose(s) of social work education, of which these are a few examples:

• “The purposes of social work education are to prepare competent and effective

professionals, to develop social work knowledge, and to provide leadership in the

development of service delivery systems” (Wagner, Newcomb, & Weiler, 2001, p. 114).

• “The purpose of social work education is the preparation of competent and effective

social work professionals who are committed to social work practice that includes

services to the poor and oppressed, and who work to alleviate poverty, oppression, and

other forms of social injustice” (Shank, 2007, p. 5).

• “[O]ne purpose of Social Work education is, ‘To develop and use research, knowledge, and

skills that advance social work practice’ (Finn & Dillon, 2007, p. 156, quoting the then-

current text of EPAS 1.0).

• “[A] significant purpose of discipline-specific education is to provide socialization to the

profession” (Litten, 2008, p. 36).

• “Currently, the purpose of social work education is to enable students to integrate the

knowledge, values, and skills of the social work profession into competent practice”

(Richardson, 2009, p. 12).

“Currently” is right: history suggests that the stated purpose(s) will change and change

again. And yet these changes do not appear to prompt much revision of MSW curricula. It

seems likely, then, that these are changes in the stated purposes of MSW education, as distinct

from the actual purposes. That is, the CSWE’s statements of purpose seem to be general and

descriptive, not specific and prescriptive – recurrently trying primarily to characterize or perhaps


to idealize MSW education, that is, rather than to dictate particular realities. That interpretation

meshes with the statement by Sowers and Dulmus (2009) that CSWE’s stated views reflect the

preferences of a majority of the CSWE’s members, not empirical findings on what works, nor on

what the public or other stakeholders want from social work education. The CSWE’s members,

says Stoesz (2008, p. 175), are selected on the basis of “identity politics as opposed to traditional

scholarship as a paradigm for professional education.” This arrangement does not appear to

prioritize effective outcomes. Stoesz and Karger (2009, p. 106) calculate that 80% of the

members of the CSWE’s board would themselves be terminated, due to their meager scholarly

publications, if they were up for promotion and tenure within a university.

Such observations suggest that the CSWE’s actual role in accreditation is not one of

providing expertise in the area of educational quality. The accreditation process itself has been

characterized as an “adversarial and bureaucratic” ordeal that “needs radical reform” (Midgley,

2009, p. 119). There are indications, too, that the CSWE is more interested in appearances than

in substance – that, in other words, the subjects that it requires to be presented in MSW curricula

are not covered very well (Karger & Hernández, 2004, p. 60). As one indicator, the Association

of Social Work Boards (ASWB, 2008) states that about one out of four MSWs fails the ASWB’s

licensing exam (Marson, DeAngelis, & Mittal, 2010, p. 98). Thyer (2010) finds that, at some

schools, that rate is an unbelievable one of every two, if not worse:

The MSW curriculum is centered on the CSWE accreditation standards. The

LCSW examination is centered on the ABSW [sic] task analysis. There have

been no formal investigations on the extent to which these two driving forces

governing the profession overlap, supplement, or contradict each other.


Such investigations are hindered, Thyer says, by the ASWB’s withholding of such information.

It appears, in other words, that the divergence between the NASW and the CSWE (above),

regarding the purpose of an MSW education, is joined by a different divergence between the

CSWE and the ASWB, at least for the many MSW students who have a clinical orientation.

As if these differences among the CSWE, the ASWB, and the NASW were not enough,

there are also many differences of opinion among those “large numbers of social work academics

[who] view CSWE as an occupying army” (Stoesz & Karger, 2009, p. 2). Not only do faculty

interpretations of the EPAS diverge from those of the CSWE; some understand the profession

and the purpose of MSW education in ways that are not immediately reconcilable with any of the

above. For instance, Popple (1985) says that “attempts to develop a unified definition of social

work have failed” because “social work is not a unitary profession to which traditional models

can be applied” (p. 568); he suggests that what ties social workers together is “not a shared body

of knowledge and skill but a common social assignment – dealing with dependency” (p. 573).

But Bar-On (1994, p. 65) asserts that social workers’ “essential job is advocacy and brokerage,

where they represent their clients’ unmet needs before other non-client resource controllers.”

Finally, for Butler, Ford, and Tregaskis (2007, p. 295), “[T]he hallmark of a professional social

worker is that she is consciously involved in the dynamic process of self-narration.”

Students, in turn, have their own views of the purpose of MSW education. To the extent

that faculty can be said to share an emphasis on social action, there is “some discrepancy

between what a high proportion of social work students want and what many social work faculty

members are prepared to provide” (Reid & Edwards, 2006, pp. 480-481). It would not be

surprising if students tend to reject what they could construe as the failed vision of e.g., the

NASW (2008) mission statement (above). Reid and Edwards (p. 476) observe that “US social


work cannot be said to have been a central actor in the formation and implementation of public

policy regarding the poor in the last third of the twentieth century.” “Nowadays,” say Karger

and Hernández (2004, p. 51), “social workers have little influence on the pressing social issues of

the day.” Under such circumstances, it would make sense for students to focus, instead, on

market realities. For example, most who want to work in management appear to consider

graduate degrees in business or public administration more marketable, and similar thoughts

seem to divert many policy-oriented students toward law and related fields. There are also other,

more remunerative fields for those who want to work in hospitals. In short, MSW programs

have little practical choice but to tailor themselves for a clinically oriented majority of students.

As yet another kind of stakeholder, MSW program admissions offices seem to be in the

position, generally, of mediating among these divergent student, faculty, practitioner,

accreditation, and budgetary perceptions of the purpose of social work education. The students

who actually enter such programs may thus not correspond with any constituency’s ideal. An

unfortunate decline in quality of such students seems to be one result. Karger and Stoesz (2003,

p. 283) suggest that a sharp increase in the number of MSW programs nationwide has led

schools to accept less qualified applicants in order to meet their expenses. Sowers and Dulmus

(2009, p. 115) echo this: “Programs are lowering admission standards and graduating marginal

students.” At the same time, they say, practice in a competitive market increasingly demands

empirically oriented knowledge and skills that are not being taught in MSW programs.

Most stakeholders – including some not discussed above, such as the university and the

larger (i.e., supra-NASW) social work profession – are unlikely to benefit from a vicious spiral

of deteriorating MSW educational quality necessitated by students’ increasing numbers and

declining academic capabilities. One possibility is that social work education cannot go much


lower: it already has a poor reputation and tends to attract among the least competitive students,

in the U.S. and abroad (Sowers & Dulmus; Green, 2006). Another possibility is that budget cuts

and developments in other kinds of programs (in e.g., nursing, public health) will continue to

drive university reorganizations that will combine social work students and faculties, potentially

raising standards and/or erasing at least some of the sense of social work as a distinctive

profession (Reid & Edwards, 2006, p. 479; Robiner, 2006).

Finally, the stakeholders with the most important vote on the purpose of MSW education

are those individuals, families, and other clients who are supposed to benefit from social work

services. Theirs is in some regards a proxy vote, sometimes cast by researchers who are

positioned to gauge actual vs. perceived and longer-term vs. shorter-term outcomes; but it is also

a somewhat market-driven affair, insofar as MSWs’ incomes flow from government agencies,

insurance companies, clients, and others who have a say in the cost-benefit calculation.

Increasingly, social workers who do not wish to be sidelined should be prepared to provide

evidence of efficacy in serving their clients (Sowers & Dulmus, 2009).

There are, in short, a number of divergent views of what MSW education is or should be.

To sum it up: while both the NASW and the CSWE claim to speak for social workers across the

board on at least the purpose of the profession itself, neither those organizations nor their

putative mission statements embody the requisite coherence and representativeness; and yet the

interests of other stakeholders are not uniform either.

A Suggested Purpose for MSW Education

It seems inadvisable to let matters rest with the foregoing statement of divergent

perspectives. An intelligible discussion of student satisfaction with MSW education does call for

a working sense of what that education is supposed to be accomplishing. In the interests of


simplicity and straightforwardness, it is proposed that the purpose of social work is to develop

and refine the ability to provide services that clients need from social workers, and that the

purpose of MSW (as distinct from BSW) education is to develop and refine that ability at a

relatively advanced level. The list of needed services is not open-ended. If clients needed a

better mousetrap from social workers, that would be part of the calculation; but in practice, that

is not likely. Rather, there is a limited and possibly shrinking list of services that someone is

going to be able and willing to pay social workers to perform, and those should dominate MSW

education as it now exists within the university setting.

In addition to services that someone will pay for, there are also services, needed by large

numbers of clients, that neither government, insurance, or charity can fund on a nationwide

(never mind global) basis. These services seem to have been most notably championed, in the

U.S. and abroad, by people who have not been MSWs (e.g., Jane Addams, Harry Hopkins,

Mohandas Gandhi, Muhummed Yunus) – who, indeed, would not qualify as social workers at all

under current definitions (Karger & Hernández, 2004, p. 56). MSWs can talk at length about the

needs of the poor, and some MSWs do work in agencies that serve the poor. Whether MSW

education does, or can, uniquely enhance students’ inclination and ability to provide such service

is another matter. Given the apparent disinclination and/or financial inability of most MSW

students to devote themselves primarily to such work (especially after incurring the costs of

graduate education), it appears that much of that work will continue to fall to those, with or

without social work degrees, who do have the means to indulge a social conscience (Karger &

Lonne, 2009, p. 34), while the main stream of the social work profession continues in what

appears to be a historical pattern of desultory attention to its ostensible social action heritage

(e.g., De Benedetti, 1984, p. 90; Bisno, 1956, p. 18).


At present, impressions of client needs relevant to MSW education tend to be conveyed

most compellingly, to SSWs, via students’ broad-brush decisions regarding the kinds of training

they need. This is not to say that students know exactly what they need to know, nor that they

are always the best sources of information on how it should be taught to them (see Abrami,

d’Apollonia, & Rosenfield, 2007, p. 414). To some extent, these are things that they are paying

the school to figure out. Generally, though, they will not be inclined to attend a school unless it

offers the credential they think they need in order to get approximately the kind of job they want.

Students’ decisions on such matters are driven by their inevitably imperfect cognizance

of the preferences of potential employers, which conform to varying degrees with inclinations of

the people who pay for the services provided by those employers, which depend in turn upon

those decisionmakers’ politics, research, personally held opinions, and other factors. In this

process of identifying and communicating the needs of end users of social work services back to

teachers, textbook writers, and other providers and facilitators of MSW educations, there are

time lags (often measured in years), informational distortions and opacities, and other (some-

times profound) flaws and impediments. Students unavoidably supplement and revise their

grasp of official knowledge sources, along the way, with their own personal discoveries and

encounters. Some of their amendments to the official story turn out to be premature or faddish;

others prove prescient; and it is generally impossible to know for sure which is which.

Students can thus be viewed as an important source of information on what an MSW

education should entail. They are not an entirely reliable source, but neither can their insights be

rationally disregarded. They are, moreover, an important, paying clientele. When their views

and preferences are overruled, multiple considerations (including good business sense, politesse,

professional ethics, and a desire for logical consistency) call for faculty and administration to


present a sound rationale, engage in consequent dialogue, gather useful data, conduct follow-up

research, improve the learning process that led the students to their overruled and supposedly

incorrect conclusion, and respond flexibly to further developments (see Elias, 2007, p. 2543). In

contrast to the dismissive environments found outside of higher education and in some other

sorts of higher education programs, these considerations can easily extend, not only to those who

are admitted to the MSW program, but also, as much as possible, to those who are rejected and,

in at least a representative sense, to those who did not even bother to apply – who went, for

example, to programs in public administration or public health instead.

The purpose of an MSW education, as proposed above, is to develop and refine the

ability to provide advanced services that clients need from social workers. The purpose of an

SSW, however, is not exactly to provide that education. That phrasing would make sense if the

SSW, like the student, were engaged in a one-time trip through the process. The proposed

purpose of an SSW is, rather, to develop the nature and quality of that process – to improve, in

other words, the iterative training of people who will provide services that clients need from

social workers. The actual teaching follows from the purpose of the SSW: improved training

implies training. In other words, the rote act of purveying the same material, semester after

semester, is stultifying for students and faculty alike but, fortunately, the SSW is not a factory.

An effective social work educational process should encourage faculty and students not only to

improve upon the subject matter of a course, but also to question that subject matter and,

whenever possible, to restate, supplement, abbreviate, or discard it. In this way, the SSW can

work perpetually toward incorporating valuable new information and skills that students might

not encounter otherwise.


Achieving the Purpose of MSW Education

There are many ways in which SSWs can strive to exemplify best practices in profes-

sional education. Among those suggested or implied above, one is to optimize licensing

processes, so as to improve quality of services without inhibiting access to them (Thyer, 2007, p.

25; Smith, 1989, pp. 94-100). SSWs’ disclosure of ASWB pass rates would help administrators,

faculty, students, and applicants alike to make more informed decisions about licensing-related

aspects of social work education. Given the low academic standing of MSW education, it seems

advisable, in addition, to investigate whether CSWE accreditation processes are helping the

profession. The preceding paragraph suggests that the purpose of an SSW is to make progress

toward these and other possible improvements in education-related matters.

Whatever the case may be at the level of the SSW, the proposed purpose at the level of

the individual MSW student is, again, to develop and refine the ability to provide advanced

services that clients need from social workers. Students seek the MSW degree, as distinct from

an MSW education, as an assurance to employers and clients that they do possess some such

ability. If the quest for a sheepskin is the only reason for a particular student’s involvement with

MSW education, it falls to the SSW to insure that the degree does provide that assurance.

Regardless of whether the student is responding to intrinsic or extrinsic motivations, though, the

SSW should seek to facilitate, and should also seek not to impair, his/her progress toward

developing and refining the ability to provide advanced services that clients need from social

workers. The SSW should try to insure, in other words, that the student could not have arranged

a superior educational experience, for that purpose, elsewhere or on his/her own.

It is suggested, then, that the SSW confronts two overlapping but non-identical duties

with respect to MSW education. First, the purpose of an SSW, as noted above, is to improve


MSW education. This may entail assorted abstract and concrete measures having present and/or

future impact, determined from the perspective of the SSW’s administrators and faculty.

Second, the pursuit of MSW education depends upon present facilitation and non-impairment of

the student’s learning, from his/her real-time perspective. Where faculty and administrators

seem more attuned to the interests of the SSW than of the student, this second obligation may

tend to become a matter of advocacy or self-advocacy on behalf of the student vis-à-vis the

institution. One could say that the first obligation calls for proactive gestures by the SSW toward

the student, while the second calls for reactive yet constructive responses by the SSW to the

student. From the administrator’s perspective, the second obligation constitutes an extension of

best practices into the area of customer service while, from the student’s vantage, that second

obligation provides an opportunity (possibly his/her first opportunity) to interact with a model

organizational client. What is sketched is thus a picture of reciprocity, in which the SSW reaches

out to students and also allows them to reach out to it.

It may be relatively easy for administrators and faculty to identify and implement

sensible, proactive steps to improve MSW education from their perspective. What remains is to

consider the second, reciprocal obligation to facilitate and not impair the student’s learning.

Since this obligation depends upon the student’s perspective, the following section introduces

issues that seem likely to emerge, within an SSW that commits itself to support for and openness

to student concerns regarding MSW education.

MSW Student Perspectives on Student Satisfaction

Scholars have investigated student satisfaction with various aspects of social work

education. For example, Rogers-Freidenberg (2008) examined MSW student satisfaction with

faculty, faculty availability, field instruction, course variety, advisement services, and career


counseling. Others have looked into MSW student satisfaction with respect to various

pedagogical devices and possibilities, including portfolios (Schatz, 2004), face-to-face contact

hours (Banks & Faul, 2007), and the use of technology (Coleman & Collins, 2008). Satisfaction

of MSW students could also be studied with respect to other aspects of their experience that have

not yet been developed in the literature, such as their satisfaction with university services

(Gruber, Fuß, Voss, & Gläser-Zikuda, 2010).

Like students across many disciplines, MSW students do commonly fill out semester-end

evaluations of their courses and professors (Abrami et al., 2007, p. 454; Marsh, 2007, pp. 372-

374). Without denying the value of these sorts of investigations for other purposes, in the

present context they tend to be peripheral, to the extent that they characterize areas of potential

student concern from an administrative rather than student perspective. In other words, their

identification of particular issues makes sense if one assumes that things are mostly OK, aside

from perhaps a few areas that may need some adjustment. From a different perspective, however

– that is, without that assumption – such gestures evoke the proverbial rearrangement of deck

chairs on the Titanic. For many MSW students, things are emphatically not mostly OK. For

such students, the canned questions on the evaluation forms (and the environment in which they

are administered) can seem almost laughable. The following paragraphs identify several

significant impediments that these sorts of students (and, through them, their future clients)

encounter in their quest to realize the purpose of an MSW education.

Discrimination against Certain Viewpoints and Identities

There are a number of reasons why students might encounter such impediments. First,

there is the suggestion (above) that SSWs are responding to the pressure to maintain enrollments

by lowering admission standards. Where this occurs, it poses a serious risk of converting


unqualified applicants into marginalized students. At the same time, it creates the likelihood

that, in at least some academic settings, people who were already among the most qualified will

become impatient, if not bored, with the ensuing deterioration in the learning process (e.g.,

Gallagher & Harradine, 1997; see Peiró, Agut, & Grau, 2010).

Student alienation is also possible if social work curricula seem ideologically narrow-

minded (see Deal & Pittman, 2009, p. 97; Khinduka, 2007, p. 20). Alienation seems especially

likely if students conclude that they cannot express their views safely – that is, they cannot let

their guard down and really become engaged – in classes or other university contexts, but must

instead insure that their views conform with those of the professor (Schrader, 2004). Indeed, not

only conservative, but also moderate and openminded liberal students are likely to distance

themselves from a campus or classroom environment in which people of unfashionable

viewpoint are ridiculed, heckled, or prevented from speaking altogether (NAS, 2007; Sowers &

Patchner, 2007; D’Souza, 2005; Webb, 2005) or are treated condescendingly by social work

professors who are unwilling or unable to see themselves and their own views in context (e.g.,

Fram & Miller-Cribbs, 2008, p. 895; compare Todd & Coholic, 2007).

Students can also feel alienated for reasons related to identity. For instance, non-

traditional students can experience social isolation, can be patronized for the ways in which their

years away from school have shaped their words and thoughts, and can be disadvantaged by

course schedules designed for young people who do not have to work during the day (see

Gordon, 2008, p. 124). Further, while there exist (and apparently will continue to exist) areas of

the university in which male or female students tend to predominate (e.g., engineering, nursing),

the male privilege of previous generations has vanished overall: female students have outnum-

bered male students in graduate schools for the past quarter-century, and the rate of divergence


has accelerated (Snyder, Dillow, & Hoffman, 2009, p. 270). Worse, negative depictions of men

in social work are pervasive, to the point that heterosexual white males in particular are fair

game for sexist and racist statements and assumptions (Britton & Stoller, 1998; Kosberg, Adams,

Wheeler, & Blundo, 2008). Not surprisingly, males, who comprised 43% of all MSW graduates

in 1960, have vanished to such an extent that they constituted only 15% in 2000 (Schilling,

Morrish, & Liu, 2008) – among whom heterosexual whites are a fraction of the fraction.

Bullying

As one might infer from some of the behaviors described above (not to mention this

writer’s personal experiences and private communications with others), bullying plays a role in

alienating actual and would-be MSW students. Generally, bullying takes different forms.

Among children, although the matter is debated, the dominant view at present seems to be that

boys are more likely (and in any event seem to be voted by peers as more likely) to engage in

physical aggression, while girls are seen as more likely to engage in social aggression (e.g.,

malicious gossip, social exclusion, interpersonal betrayal) (Waasdorp & Bradshaw, 2009, p. 732;

Hawley, Little, & Card, 2008, p. 77). As boys mature, it seems that they are socialized toward

social rather than physical aggression (Goldstein, Young, & Boyd, 2008, p. 651; Basow, Cahill,

Phelan, Longshore, & McGillicuddy-DeLisi, 2007, p. 90; Kaukiainen et al., 2001).

Acts of relational aggression, which can be difficult to detect and respond to, occur far

more frequently than acts of physical aggression (Kevorkian & D’Antona, 2008, p. 100; see

Pepler, Craig, Yuile, & Connolly, 2004, p. 91). While many people (prominently including

social workers) loudly denounce physical violence, they tend at the same time to be quietly

complicit in many varieties of it (Pilsuk, 2007; Passas & Goodwin, 2004). And yet relational

aggression can also do enormous damage (e.g., Klomek et al., 2009; Vossekuil, Robert, Reddy,


Borum, & Modzeleski, 2002, p. 21; Goldstein et al., 2008, p. 649) and, especially in the form

some call “mobbing,” can be personally devastating (Hecker, 2007; Varhama & Björkqvist,

2005). Some consider relational aggression more harmful than the physical variety (Waasdorp &

Bradshaw, 2009, p. 740), especially when it takes a “psychopathic” form (Kelly, 2007, p. 113);

but others downplay it (compare e.g., Chesney-Lind et al., 2007, p. 330 with Hegarty, Sheehan,

& Schonfeld, 1999, p. 401). In the latter instance, possibly it is easier for those who, themselves,

have competed effectively in the realm of indirect aggression to excuse it as actually embodying

“higher social intelligence” (compare Chesney-Lind et al., p. 335 with Hawley et al., 2008,

p. 84). There does not appear to have been research on the prevalence of social aggression

among social workers or social work faculty as compared to the general public.

Interestingly, socially dominant boys seem to use relational aggression effectively

(Hawley et al., 2008, p. 84). That raises the possibility (supported by this writer’s personal

experience and by conversations with others) that it may take a certain kind of man to thrive in

social work academia as a professor or administrator. (It is not clear whether this possibility

applies especially to men who have come up through the ranks in what seems to have been a

more established anti-male environment within the past few decades.) The possibility that comes

to mind here is that the kind of man who can succeed in an SSW may be one who uses relational

aggression, not only to interact with his colleagues in a manner consistent with the dominant

organizational culture (see Kelly, 2007, p. 114), but also to maintain a sense of dominance over

other men (including male students) by portraying them, in elite fashion (see Gambrill, 2001,

p. 169), as boors – as, that is, unenlightened or otherwise inferior (e.g., Pease, 2003, p. 135;

Hogan, 1998, p. 19; Neuman & Kreuger, 2003, p. 429).


Regrettably, these various bullying phenomena tend not to be matters that actual and

would-be MSW students, whether male or female, tend to find open for discussion in SSWs. In

fact, victims of bullies (and males more than females) are evidently least likely, of all

participants in a bullying scenario, to receive social support, despite being most likely to need it

(Holt & Espelage, 2007, pp. 985-986, 991). It tends instead to be expected that MSW students

will acquiesce in social work’s preoccupation with physical aggression, and will accept opacity

(including non-transparency and an absence of accountability for social aggression) as a fact of

life, in the SSW and in the very ethics of the profession (see Kelly, 2007, p. 116; Gambrill, 2006,

p. 60). The point here is simply that those who experience such behaviors within the SSW itself

are not likely to concur with an administrative assumption that things are mostly OK.

Social Work – University Mismatch

Bullying gains traction in circumstances of unequal power (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo,

1973, p. 94). Just as the majority of workplace bullying incidents are perpetrated by supervisors

(Kelly, 2007, p. 119; LaVan & Martin, 2007, p. 149), so also educators abuse students, with

surprising frequency, from elementary school all the way to the Ph.D. (Whitted & Dupper, 2008,

p. 336; Hinchey & Kimmel, 2000, p. 107). But perhaps what should be highlighted here is not

the more obvious instances of overt or covert bullying in which MSW program faculty and

administrators may engage, including forms discussed above, but rather the more taken-for-

granted misuses of power through which MSW education is dragged down to approximately the

level of accounting, dental hygiene, or any other tedious, mercenary field of study.

There is, first and perhaps foremost, the concept that social work should be taught

primarily in a college or university, when that is so obviously not where most of those low-GRE

MSW students think they should be. It is hardly a good practice to infantilize them by forcing


them to sit in classrooms for the equivalent of at least a solid year, where they may or may not be

reading or otherwise learning very much, and are also being schooled in parochialism rather than

interdisciplinary collaboration (Taylor, 2009). It is absurd, if not downright exploitative, to

oblige those students to forgo a substantial amount of potential income, and often to incur large

amounts of debt (Kim, 2007), knowing that most will not be making very much and that many

will struggle to find employment at any price. Were it not for what appears to be a gender-

related conceit of academic superiority, the indicators would all seem to direct this sort of educa-

tion to a vocational institution. “Social workers often identify the field practicum experience as

the single most important part of social work education” (Ligon & Ward, 2002, p. 63), and with

good reason. Indeed, for the large majority of social work students who want to be practitioners,

an educational experience structured around a high-quality apprenticeship (see Fuller & Unwin,

2007, p. 456) of some type (see Jacoby, 1991; Swisher, 2008) would be far more likely to be

educational, affordable, and responsive to their sense of what is most rewarding in their MSW

education (see D’Aprix, Dunlap, Abel, & Edwards, 2004, p. 274; Carlson, May, Loertscher, &

Cobia, 2003; Sigaut, 1993), and might at the same time teach coping skills for what can be,

today, a startling disconnect between educational theory and practice realities (e.g., Preston-

Shoot, 2003). Such an education could still entail some academic coursework (Strauss, 1968)

and result in a degree (Glover & Bilginsoy, 2005, p. 344), with an MSW option for those on an

academic track.

University education of social workers is objectionable, not only from the student’s

perspective, but also from that of professional ethics. Programs and projects within universities

tend to prioritize the best and the brightest, the highest-earning and the most prestigious. These

elitist orientations (see Khinduka, 2007, p. 18) make sense within the world as the university sees


it. They are not, however, compatible with social work values. People who (from an elitist

perspective) are the worst and most ignorant, pathetic, and desperate – these are among the

clients who most need social workers’ help. As some of the groups cited above (e.g., victims of

bullying) can attest, years of steeping in the university ambiance do not incline MSW students or

faculty to share or empathize with the situations experienced by needy clients. To cite appren-

tices again as a point of contrast, MSW students are not becoming acclimated to their clients’

environments and are not modeling a form of training to which clients themselves can aspire (see

Pannabecker, 1991, p. 77; Hamilton, 1993). That sort of thing could reduce burnout and, in the

process, might impair the demand for graduates of MSW programs. Instead, social workers are

taught the mentality of an occupying force. One is left with Margolin’s (1997, p. 121)

observation: “[T]he stated goal is to empower clients, but there is at the same time all this talk of

confronting, penetrating resistances, gaining client cooperation.” People are seen, not as

individuals, but as products of systems (e.g., Tam & Coleman, 2009, p. 53). Hence, to cite one

outcome of MSW education, despite growing need, graduates from these programs still eschew

the prospect of working with old people (Cummings & Adler, 2007, pp. 925-926; Simons,

Shepherd, & Munn, 2008), when real-life exposure to such clients could instead have been

generating students’ interest in careers in gerontology (Gutheil, Heyman, & Chernesky, 2009;

Olson, 2007). Another example, evident in the preceding pages, is that of working with male

clients: it will be difficult for the student to do so effectively, if s/he has been trained to

problematize men – has, indeed, been essentially cloistered from them in professional terms.

An additional problem of social work education within the university environment: the

university is hierarchical and authoritarian, with all the drawbacks of such organization from a

social work perspective (e.g., Milgram, 1973; Barney & Dalton, 2006). Over the years, it gives a


small number of talented, shrewd, or otherwise advantaged individuals a great deal of power

over the lives and futures of hundreds, thousands, in a few instances even hundreds of thousands

of people. Authoritarian organization, at its best, may invite and use feedback from its minions;

but it is not remotely an empowering form of structure, it rarely fosters anything resembling

genuine dialogue, it tends to be unresponsive and burdensome, and at its worst it is, simply put,

the very worst, the most oppressive and destructive, of all forms of human organization. This

sort of thing may sound lovely, from the perspective of those social workers who love

bureaucracy, but it is not very compatible with service, respect, or other commonly cited values

of the social work profession.

These are not abstract issues. One need only compare the functionality and motivation of

MSW students in their field placements against their typically lethargic behavior in the class-

room to reach the conclusion that, far from things being mostly OK, fundamental assumptions

and accepted verities in MSW education are dramatically out of alignment with the needs and

preferences of clients and of MSW students themselves. The purpose of MSW education – to

develop and refine the ability to provide advanced services that clients need from social workers

– is likely to be better served by a radical rethinking of the relationship between the academy and

the profession, beginning with some maturation of an administrative ability and desire to detect

what students themselves need from social work.

Mental Health of MSW Faculty and Students

A peek into the literature suggests that faculty members may experience depersonal-

ization, emotional exhaustion, stress, anxiety, depression, and sleep disturbances (Shanafelt et

al., 2009; Lampman, Phelps, Bancroft, & Beneke, 2008); gender-differentiated psychological

distress arising from “work and family responsibilities” and “hassles” (Dunn, Whelton, &


Sharpe, 2006, pp. 519-520); and, for increasing numbers of non-tenured faculty, “pervasive

exclusion, oppression, and devaluation” and “hierarchy, privilege, and oppression” (Purcell,

2007, pp. 122, 130); and also that faculty use recreational as well as performance-enhancing

drugs (Schnake, Fredenberger, & Dumler, 2004, p. 9; Chatterjee, 2008, p. 145). These realities

pose an opportunity: Rasmussen and Mishna (2008, p. 201) suggest, refreshingly, that faculty

make social work concepts more real to students by disclosing their own experiences (involving

e.g., racism, hidden disabilities, sexual attraction to a client). In their understated acknowledg-

ment, “However, sharing such an experience always feels somewhat more risky” (p. 202).

Despite whatever personal issues they bring to the table, social work faculty seem to

consider themselves obliged and able to perform a “gatekeeping” function. According to Grady

and Mr. S (2009, p. 52), this function requires faculty to “balance their personal principles about

being fair to a student who meets the course requirements with their obligations as a gatekeeper

for the profession.” The purpose of the gatekeeping function is “ensuring that students who

graduate from their programs are prepared to be competent practitioners” (Grady & Mr. S., 2009,

p. 51). This concern, sensible enough on its face, is nonetheless ironic in the context of

questions (above) regarding the suitability of CSWE board members, not to mention the very

human faculty foibles just cited.

In the particular case, Grady (2009) gave Mr. S (an unnamed student) an F. When she

later discovered that he was smoking crack cocaine, she felt “more confident in [her] role as

gatekeeper and in the system’s ability to ‘weed out’ [ sic] students who are either not ready to

complete graduate-level work or who are ill suited for the profession” (p. 59). It is an interesting

sentiment, given her admission that “students who are admitted into social work graduate

programs have a higher rate of ‘traumatic factors’ in their early lives compared with graduate


students in other nonhelping professions” (p. 61). The reader may suspect, not that the system

worked, but that S was unlucky and/or an extreme case, given Grady’s acknowledgments that

this was the first time she had ever given a student an F (p. 56) and that published reports of

gatekeeping are rare (p. 61). Apparently the system does not succeed in weeding out most such

individuals, else she would have flunked and gatekept numerous students previously. What

appears to happen instead is that ill-suited students “screen themselves out of the profession”

(Olson & Royse, 2006, p. 43), sometime after being admitted and paying their tuition. In light of

the foregoing remarks regarding a competition for warm bodies to fill seats, it appears that the

default position of the admissions office is to admit students, of whom a considerable number

will have psychological difficulties that will reduce their likelihood of success within the

environment of the typical SSW.

The exception to that apparent policy arises in the case of students who pose a visible risk

of causing problems. Rather than face potential legal difficulties when ejecting such students,

senior social work professors Urwin, Van Soest, and Kretzschmar (2006, p. 169) recommend

doing it at the point of admission whenever possible. In contrast to earlier years, when social

work applicants are remembered as having had more of a sense of mission, these professors

indicate that SSWs may now find themselves dealing with a variety of problem students. Some

of the categories that they consider problematic are revealing: those with conflicts between their

own views and social work ethical values; those who are “defensive about performance

feedback”; those who display “rigid thinking” or “lack of openness to learning” (pp. 165, 169).

There is, again, a point of comparison vis-à-vis faculty. A disinterested reader might wonder, for

instance, whether one could detect rigid thinking or defensiveness in the social work professor

who sticks stubbornly to a viewpoint despite its implausibility. A lack of openness to learning


certainly could arise in an academic environment where what counts is not a love of learning nor

an ability to teach, but rather skill in attracting funding – never mind the inbred social work

academic environment in particular, where faculty are required to have earned MSW degrees in

lookalike, “cookie-cutter” programs (Stoesz & Karger, 2009, p. 132) and doctoral degrees mostly

from a smallish number of preferred universities. Despite encouragement to explore “multiple

intelligences” (Matto, Barry-Edwards, Hutchison, Bryant, & Waldbillig, 2006, p. 415), MSW

education is not renowned for its intellectual diversity.

One particularly troubling category of “problem student” that crops up, in the list offered

by Unwin et al. (2006, p. 165), is that of students with “histories of psychosocial trauma” or

“self-preoccupation” or “ability challenges.” It seems that, if there were enough “good”

applicants to fill those seats, these kinds of problem students would be rejected. Confirming a

clear pattern of rejection of students with psychiatric disabilities, GlenMaye and Bolin (2007,

pp. 127-129) state that, “Despite 30 years of disability law,” over two-thirds of the social work

educators who responded to their survey stated that their programs had “counseled out students

who had psychiatric disabilities” (where “counseled out” means “pressured to drop out”) and, in

addition, that 20% of their respondents stated that counseling-out was their program’s most

typical response to students with psychiatric disabilities. The point is not so much the illegality

of those programs’ behavior; it is that this happens in social work, where tolerance and inclusion

increasingly appear to be reserved for just the right kinds of misfits. These are, again, the kinds

of things that will not be OK for some number of MSW students.

The singling-out of those students with psychiatric disabilities raises another concern. It

is not clear what criteria were used to select students for counseling-out. Assuming that

admissions officers did obtain transcripts and other verifications of basic academic ability, it


appears that those selected for elimination may have been academically capable but were in

some sense unpopular, or may simply have failed to conceal their disabilities. That surmise

emerges from indications that psychiatric disabilities are not uncommon among social work

students. Consider this brief selection of results from studies, done in several SSWs, in which

social work students (mostly MSWs) displayed disturbingly high levels of disadvantageous or

impairing characteristics: 69% indicated that their family histories included problems of

substance abuse, psychopathology, violence, and/or compulsive disorders, with 41% having

problems in more than one such area (Sellers & Hunter, 2005, p. 877); 28% reported having

experienced physical assault, 12% reported having attempted suicide, 50% reported having used

illegal drugs other than marijuana, 34% were at risk for clinical depression, and 75% reported

having sought mental health services (Horton, Diaz, & Green, 2009, pp. 467-469); 31% reported

having been sexually molested, with an atypically high proportion of those incidents occurring in

childhood (Russel, Hill, Coyne, & Woody, 1993); and, in two studies of social work students in

Britain, 42% and 64%, respectively, were identified as having at least a minor clinical

psychiatric disorder (Collins, Coffey, & Morri, 2008, pp. 13, 15).

In other words, the rejection of some students with visible psychiatric disabilities seems

to be an inside joke shared by others with similar disabilities. Since SSWs are emphatically not

in the business of creating an environment in which students can safely “recognize personal

issues” and “work through them” (Sellers & Hunter, 2005, p. 879) with collective support, many

who do have such disabilities may have to endure them in silence if not denial, while those

without such disabilities, deprived of the insight and understanding that transparency and

rapprochement could engender, may have no recourse but to scratch their heads and wonder why

so many of their classmates – and, later, their professional colleagues – behave so strangely.


Recap

This section of this paper suggests that student satisfaction surveys, focusing upon

isolated aspects of the MSW educational experience, appear to rest upon an assumption that the

MSW educational environment is largely satisfactory, such that what is needed is mere tinkering

around the edges. The argument advanced here is, in effect, that a competent qualitative explora-

tion of that environment would reveal major problems in MSW education, even at the best

schools. Those problems include discrimination against unfavored people and ideas, bullying of

students by faculty and by other students, distortions of social work ideals wrought by the SSW’s

location within a seriously incompatible university environment, and execrable attitudes toward

discrimination (regarding e.g., psychiatric disabilities). A question not explored here is whether

this sort of environment may breed, attract, or depend upon infusions of people and attitudes that

are oriented toward and/or capable (through e.g., what some may consider optimism) of

inappropriately disregarding or downplaying the regrettable features of such an environment

(e.g., Crosno, Rinaldo, Black, & Kelley, 2009).

Summary

This paper began with a look at the purposes of MSW education. It did not appear that

putative mission statements for the profession as a whole, as suggested by the NASW and the

CSWE, could provide a basis for deducing the purpose of MSW education. There also appeared

to be considerable disagreement among other stakeholders (including faculty, students, the

university, and consumers of social services) regarding that purpose. In response to that state of

affairs, it was proposed that the purpose of MSW education is to develop and refine the ability to

provide advanced services that clients need from social workers.


It was then noted that students occupy a communicative position in which they convey, to

SSWs, the current cash-on-the-barrelhead interpretation of what clients need from social service

agencies. There seemed to be a distinction between the purpose of an MSW education, as just

defined, and the purpose of an SSW, which was proposed to be the pursuit of progress toward

improved MSW education. That pursuit appeared to call for two forms of endeavor on the part

of the SSW: to seek improvements proactively, and also, in an expansive sense of the term, to

welcome – that is, to take seriously; to treat as vital – the views and needs of MSW students.

If MSW student impressions of a proper MSW education are taken seriously, it quickly

becomes evident that several significant aspects of current MSW educational processes

desperately need reworking. It seems unlikely that social work educators are unaware of all of

the concerns described above. What appears more likely is that they do not find them compel-

ling, else they would long since have implemented appropriate changes. Since those needs are in

fact compelling to many of the students affected, however, one may wonder what should be

inferred from the fact that social work professors, who tend to have some knowledge of research

methods, content themselves with the one-shot semester-end evaluation forms commonly used to

gauge student satisfaction. Perhaps a case could be made that such forms are utilized, not as a

genuine data-collection device, but rather as a shield to deflect calls for serious change. Making

that case is a project for another day.


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Documents

Some Impediments to MSW Student Satisfaction