LETTERS

Financial burdens of graduate school

AS A DOCTORAL STUDENT IN psychology, I appreciated the recent Monitor coverage of the financial burden of graduate school ("Balancing one's future income against cost of earning a psychology degree," February issue).

However, I take issue with the article's implication that psychology graduate students at public institutions (of whom I am one), who often receive tuition waivers and stipends for teaching or research assistantships, have relatively little to worry about in regard to debt accumulation and student loan repayment.

While I consider myself lucky in comparison to my unfunded, private-institution peers, and although I am extremely grateful for my tuition waiver and stipend, I defy anyone to live reasonably in Chicago as a graduate student on an income of $9,000 to $12,000 a year. My husband and I, both full-time students from financially strained family backgrounds, make do with garage-sale furniture, do not own a car, and consider a restaurant meal something of a luxury. Yet, our income still falls far short of our living expenses. As a result, we are forced to borrow substantial amounts of money every year just to get by.

The reality is that, unless one has a spouse with a source of income or financial help from one's family, debt accumulation is a fact of life for graduate students in urban areas with high costs of living, even with "funding." It is important that potential graduate students understand this when making their educational decisions.

IN YOUR FEBRUARY ISSUE, the article that struck me the most was written by John M. Grohol, PsyD, "Carefully consider graduate school debt." Like him, I went to a private school where I paid tuition and now have over $100,000 worth of debt. I did not live "well." I worked part-time all through school and had to carefully consider every purchase I made.

I have read all the practice articles in the Monitor for the past several years. I have also read books and articles and hundreds of web sites about how to survive in business, how to find your niche market, how to market yourself, and how to improve your career. The articles (and the ads) all suggest to focus your career, to get more training, to take classes in marketing, to network.

With what money? I will be paying back the government 20 percent of my income for the next 25 years. I read the articles and know I have done all the legwork I can with the little money I manage to save. And all I can conclude is that it won't change after I get licensed--it will only get worse, and that it's not hard out there, "It's Hell!" Maybe you should just print that in really big, bold letters.

WHAT WELCOME NEWS TO read in "College students getting brand new wake-up call" that courses which introduce psychology majors to the profession of psychology have become accepted. I remember proposing such a course about five or six years ago, only to be told by my own department that such a course would be considered without academic merit, and "giving students credit just for being psychology majors."

In fact, a few years later, I was actually asked to teach the course I proposed, not because views had changed, however. Rather, I proposed to teach the course as a way of providing an internship experience for majors in peer advising, and it became apparent that this was a cost-effective way of staffing our advising office.

Regrettably, advising is still not afforded the respect it deserves, but at least some of what undergraduate advisors do is being institutionalized in such courses. I might add that the students who have taken this course consider it probably the most important course they have taken in their major.

AS A PROFESSOR IN A PRO-fessional school and private practitioner of 20 years, I was very interested in the series of articles in the February Monitor concerning student loans. As I see it, a number of important issues were not considered in the suggestions to current and prospective students.

While it is true that traditional PhD programs usually offer scholarships, it must be understood that these grants are attached to "assistantships" which require 20 or more hours a week of work. These programs also typically take 1 to 3 years longer to complete and the percentage of entering students who graduate from them is significantly less than of those who enter professional schools.

It has been my experience that the typical professional school student can more than make up for the additional costs of their programs by utilizing their time to work in jobs which are usually relevant to their interests.

WE APPRECIATED THE BALanced and accurate coverage in the article entitled "Balancing one's future income against cost of earning a psychology degree."

There is no question that the cost of attending graduate school has risen precipitously in all fields. This is a highly charged topic that is often treated very sensationally. But there are real economic forces at work that contribute to this phenomenon, and we felt that your article made an effort to highlight not just the problem and its causes, but also some of the things we are doing to try to address the problem. In addition to those elements you mentioned, California School of Professional Psychology opted to hold tuition constant for at least two years while we conduct an exhaustive organizational redesign to ferret out any unnecessary costs and streamline our operations. Again, let me thank you for taking the high road, and covering the issue fairly.

Report from the front line

PATRICK A. McGUIRE'S RE-cent article gives voice to my feelings about our profession and my experience. I am one of those psychologists who is not encouraging kids to enter our profession. I am glad that The Monitor is addressing our experience in the trenches. I am concerned that these attitudes reflect the secondary effects of stress from working in a system, that is budget driven, productivity oriented, and providing services to multiple individuals in poverty of spirit and life.

Last summer one of my clients with a borderline personality killed herself. Her hour was filled with another BPD. I had a heart attack and bypass surgery a month later. As Hans Seyle says, stress parallels the wear and tear on our bodies. What are the long-term effects of working with clients who spend all their time talking about killing themselves? How do we take care of ourselves in this process?

Thanks for representing the concerns of the front line.

I WAS DEEPLY AMUSED AS I read the last Monitor in which the income level of psychologists was widely discussed. Managed care, masters-level providers, and just about every other buzzword available in current discourse was blamed. Totally ignored was the fact that psychology practice and the teaching of psychology have never been a great source of income other than IO psychologists who managed to enter industry, where salaries have always been greater.

For a brief period of time, the availability of indemnity insurance did improve our incomes. Prior to that (about 1975) we all did primarily fee-for-service work without any form of reimbursement. The marketplace is becoming saturated with people expecting to go out and earn $35,000 or more per year. As clinical director of a clinic and, prior to that, chief psychologist of two Mental Health Centers, I never paid more than $40,000 for highly trained psychologists with doctoral degrees prior to my retirement in 1996. I often told people that you needed to bill for about $80,000 or more in private practice to net $40,000 before taxes and, at $50 per hour (my last fee in private practice), that took a good deal of billing with little time off for vacations.

If you wish to receive income in the top 15 percent of the population, I would suggest you not enter the field of psychology. You will do much better in commission sales or skilled factory work.

MADD on TBI

THANK YOU VERY MUCH for the excellent article on the prevalence of traumatic brain injury (TBI). As the consulting psychologist for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, I frequently talk with victims of drunk driving crashes who can not figure out why they aren't "getting over" their crash as they expected. Very often, they were told in the emergency room that they are "fine" because their head injury isn't apparent or other injuries are paramount. Explaining what is happening to them and that help is available from neuropsychologists often brings them relief.

To help educate victims and survivors about TBI, MADD developed a brochure on closed head injury. Although geared to victims of alcohol-related crashes, it would be appropriate for anyone who suspects they may have suffered TBI. One copy is available free of charge by calling (800) 438-6233, ext. 231. It can also be downloaded from MADD's web site at www.madd.org.

Dissertation woes

AS A PSYCHOLOGIST WHO works with blocked writers, I was pleased to see your helpful tips for "all-but-dissertation" graduate students in the February issue. Bogging down at the dissertation stage is a problem for a small but significant group--often some of the best--and not only in clinical psychology programs. Like the proverbial fish that does not see water, faculty and students may be oblivious to writing in the words "writing a dissertation."

Even if they score well on tests, many students are unprepared for a sustained piece of writing. However skilled at summarizing others' ideas, developing their own in writing takes many hours to produce, and many faculty hours to read. Where's the return on investment?

Offering tips like "start early" or "avoid internships" is nice, but not always realistic. Instead, graduate schools should ensure that students develop skills and experience in planning and producing such work. This also means ensuring professors have the time and commitment to comment on them in depth.

Unfortunately, scientifically minded psychology professors may not associate "hard knowledge" with the (written) context in which knowledge is presented. For them, writing may be just a throwaway package for serious research content. Some are themselves challenged writers; journal editors tear their hair out getting their manuscripts into presentable shape. Career psychologists care much about publishing and grant application, but little about learning to write. They see no paradox here.

In the state where I practice, licensing used to mean both multiple-choice exams and an essay on a research topic. The former could be scored by computer, but the essays had to be considered by live literate persons who knew what to look for. They also had to reach consensus with each other and handle static from some candidates who could breeze through the multiple-choice, but, under pressure, could not put two sentences together. Some years ago, New York decided it did not need the aggravation; the requirement to write an essay was dropped.

Shouldn't our field make a better effort to practice, and teach others to practice, what it preaches to the "all-but-dissertation" student?

Authorship is more complex

"The authorship dilemma: who gets credit for what?" (December Monitor) is more complex than the article presents. Academic credit is quite different from legal copyright ownership. Academic tradition may grant authorship for key conceptual ideas, innovative research designs, and integrative research theories. Copyright doesn't, patent may or may not.

Copyright authorship is generally limited to the words and writing that are crafted in a "tangible medium of expression" [17 USC Section 102 (a)]. "In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, systems, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work." [17 USC Section 102(b)]. In short, academic "authorship" and legal copyright "authorship" are quite different.

Deciding both academic authorship and copyright/patent ownership should generally be done before research begins. Moreover, institutions can help by now discussing and then publishing in college catalogs and similar prominent sources default ownership assumptions and institutional procedures for clarifying legal title.

To support such discussions, we have prepared a sample one-page draft-for discussion-and-change intellectual property policy for faculty, staff, student, and administrators. It provides default ownership, administration, and income provisions, so that if the creators of the intellectual property cannot agree or, more likely, neglect to obtain written agreements beforehand, fair allocations are made, not lost as public domain.

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