Interesting development at SCUPS

SCUPS' website states that the school's M.A. in Psychology is now approved for licensure as a Marriage and Family Therapist in California. The school's Ph.D. in Psychology and Psy.D. remain approved for licensure as a Clinical Psychologist.

I don't know whether SCUPS doctors ever pass the license exam. If they do, this HAS to be the cheapest way there is to become a clinical psychologist.

Their Ph.D. in Psychology, but not their Psy.D, is approved by ODA.

Their J.D. is, of course, Bar qualifying. I just wish one of their graduates would pass the Bar on the first or second attempt once in a while. The Bar exam statistics don't credit any particular school after one year from graduation. Thus it is difficult to know if SCUPS graduates EVER pass. I assume they do but I sure couldn't prove it.

 

SCUPS and the Cal Bar

Well as they say, you can't have your cake and eat it too - California is the only state that allows everything from UA schooling to correspondence to state, but not ABA approved to take the Bar exam. The flip side to this unusual equation is that the Cal bar exam is one of the most difficult to pass. The exam consists of more parts than most, and goes into depth more than most. My brother passed the Washington Bar easy enough, and had to prepare twice as long for the Cal Bar and then didn't pass.

There are many shcools, even good ones, that have very low bar passage rates depending on the particular exam offering. Just go to the Calfornia State Bar web site and look under recent exam statistics and you will see this. I know very little about the law program at SCUPS, but it may be very small in numbers of students. The Cal Bar stats will show how many from SCUPS took the exam and how many passed. You can even look up the statistics from a historcial viewpoint and see how many have passed in total.

What is interesting is the number of passers from Oak Brook - a completely UA school that operates by correspondence. (It has a religious center as well, making it quite unique)

Ray Lund

 

Oak Brook has done remarkably well the last few exam cycles but in the July 2004 exam its pass rate fell below Concord. Quite surprising, I thought. Thing is, go back through the stats and you will see that there are very few SCUPS grads even TAKING the Bar. Baby Bar, yes, a few, but SCUPS is not one of the more "competitive" D/L law schools, Bar exam wise. It is also MUCH cheaper than Concord; about the same as Oak Brook.

It happens that the Cal Psych Board also publishes statistics. SCUPS grads DO take and pass that exam, it appears.

You are right about the CalBar being murder...most California ABA law schools run first time pass rates of 50% or a little more. There is an odd phenomenon, however: ALL of the UC schools have pass rates around 80% along with Stanford and USC, IIRC. The only other California law school to even approach that kind of success in the July Bar was LaVern, a non ABA school!

Go figure.

 

Here's what the California Psych Board has to say abut non-accredited psychology programs:

http://psychboard.ca.gov/licensing/unaccredited.htm

It seems that the state's psychology profession is distinctly underwhelmed by them. Legislation was passed several years ago requiring all candidates for Clinical Psychology licenses to have doctoral degrees from RA schools, but the CA-approved psych programs existing at that time were grandfathered in. There were 17 of them, but with the loss of Cal Coast, I guess that's now down to 16.

A couple of years ago I looked at the 1999 and 2001 psych-board results. Here's the combined results for the two years.

I've included all of the CA-approved schools that I recognize and some selected RA psych schools for comparison.

They are ranked according to pass percentage. The format is: RA/CA, name, number who passed the exam/number who attempted it (both years combined), pass percentage. DL schools in blue.

RA UCLA 5/5 100%
CA Cal. Inst. Human Science 1/1 100%
CA W. Grad. Sch. Psych. 2/2 100%
RA Biola U. 10/12 83.83%
RA U. So. Calif. 8/11 72.73%
RA CSPP-San Diego 21/29 72.41%
RA Pac. Grad. Sch. Psych 14/20 70%
RA Fielding I. 4/6 66.67%
RA Pacifica Grad. I. 4/7 57.14%
CA Ryokan College 14/25 56%
RA CSPP-Berkeley 27/49 55.1%
RA CIIS 6/11 54.44%
RA CSPP-LA 62/118 52.54%
CA Prof. Sch. Psych. 7/14 50%
RA Wright I. Berkeley 13/27 48.15%
CA Cal. Grad. I. 23/51 45.10%
RA CSPP-Fresno 14/39 35.90%
CA Am. Beh. Sci. I. 1/3 33.33%
CA Ctr. Psych. Studies 2/8 25%
RA US Intl. U. 8/35 22.86%
CA Newport U. 2/9 22.22%
CA Cal. Coast U. 2/12 16.67% Psych doctorate discontinued
CA SCUPS 0/1 0%
CA No. Cal. Grad. U. 0/1 0%

SCUPS only had one test taker in those two years, who failed to pass. Several of the CA-approved psych schools had no test takers at all in these two years.

Since then, the multi-campus California School of Professional Psychology (the campuses vary considerably in pass percentage) merged with underperforming US International U. to become Alliant International University. Alliant is the largest source of clinical psychologists in California, by far. (Alliant's also in serious trouble with WASC.)

 

Best use of color I've seen yet on this board.

 

Okay, then I misunderstood the examining board's statistics. There appear to be two exams; one professional and the other jurisprudence, or so I thought. I THOUGHT some SCUPS grads passed the former. But no?

 

Ah. There's a table on the California Psychology Board webaite showing the number of licensed psychologists in California by school. SCUPS has produced four to date.

Four out of how many graduates I wonder?

 

Re: Re: Interesting development at SCUPS

 

Re: Re: Re: Interesting development at SCUPS

Indeed, what? USIU ran into serious financial troubles in the early 1990's; its very existence was threatened. But they pulled out of that (or so I thought). I figured the whole Alliant thing would have put finances to rest. Could it be academic-related?

 

Re: Re: Interesting development at SCUPS

 

Re: Re: Re: Interesting development at SCUPS

Hi Simon. I dunno.

I'm just responding to the three little daggers next to Alliant's name on the WASC listing, indicating that it's been issued an Order to Show Cause why its accreditation shouldn't be revoked. That's worse than probation, suggesting that Alliant is skating on very thin ice.

http://www.wascweb.org/senior/directories.htm

 

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