licensure.
|
My
wife is a neuropsychologist, which means she has to be licensed to
practice by each
state in which she works. In many states
it’s not a big deal; there’s a standard test called the EPPP that
over half
the states will accept as proof that a person is competent to practice
psychology. Other states, however,
require a lot more hoop jumping in addition to the EPPP.
As it
turns out, the two states with the most hoop jumping are Interestingly
enough, the licensure requirements in MA and CA appear to be less about
protecting
the public from incompetent psychologists and more about protecting
turf. These two states have a surplus of
psychologists, and the state psychology boards deliberately make it
tedious and
difficult to obtain licensure, regardless of the applicant’s training. Of course, they claim it’s all about ensuring
that every licensed psychologist is appropriately trained, but as far
as we can tell this is
somewhere between pure fantasy and an outright lie. So,
the first step was the EPPP exam, which is the standard test everyone
has to
take. It’s actually kind of a big deal,
so she studied for ten weeks. Of course,
she studied too much and passed with no problem. $555
down
the tube. Check a box. Then
the extra hoops started appearing, courtesy of the great state of Did
I mention that my wife actually taught two sections of this very same
class at
a four-year college in Next,
she had to take one extra credit hour of social psychology, because she
only
had two hours of it (not three) on her transcript. This
was
because her graduate program had
tweaked their curriculum the year she was taking this sequence of
classes; they
revised their curriculum the next year to address this very problem,
but that
doesn’t do her or her classmates any good. After
lots of phone calls and headache, she was able to
arrange to do an
independent study with her old graduate program to pick up the extra
hour. Another $900 dollars wasted. Check a box. Finally,
she came to the last of the ridiculous requirements, which is one more
written
test to confirm that she wasn’t retarded. This
comprehensive test cost $200 and consisted
of a grand total of 20 questions covering This
process has taken ten months and cost over four thousand dollars…after she had
already been licensed by the state of |