Cummings Graduate Institute

You don't need to look it up state by state. Every state has some variation of a licensed social worker for which the degree to practice is a Masters. Every state licenses LMFTs. These are incredibly common license classes.

You provided an example of a state that allows for a supervised masters psychology practitioner. Psychology is not the only field that represents "clinicians." In new York, there are no masters level psychologists (except unlicensed and allowed to practice in supervised settings as well as school psychologists, where the terminal degree is a Masters). So your example is that one licensed field doesn't allow masters level clinicians. Great! And So? My statement stands. Social workers are clinicians who are licensed at the Masters level. They are regulated thusly in every state. As are LMFTs. Mental Health counselors can be a bit spottier. Then you have some anomalies like psychoanalyst. Either way, these are all masters level practitioners who are licensed at the masters level.

 

OK, I normally enjoy the antics of our very own Steve Levicoff more than most but I now feel I need to blow the bullshit alarm.

In a 24 hour period, you labeled a Coptic Orthodox seminary as a "sleazy diploma mill" while mocking the way Coptic clergy dresses. Not terrible, but the sort of thing where, if this were the workplace, we'd be having a counseling session and you'd be going for mandatory cultural sensitivity training.

Now we're onto labeling Cummins Institute as a degree mill for...what exactly? Listing "Dr" as well as post-nominals? I am not going to hunt around for degree colleges but I did make a quick grab for Dr. Caccavale whose LinkedIn indicates that his PhD is from the University of Southern California.

They were on the Institutions to Be Considered list for DEAC. Now they are saying that they were accredited. So either the DEAC website just hasn't posted the latest round of accreditation actions or Cummings went through the application process just to falsely claim accreditation a few months later, which would most assuredly tank their candidacy and fool, what, two or three students to enroll in the meantime? But then, Dr. Steve Levicoff, PhD (see what I did there?) because I wanted so much for your vitriol to have some foundation, I called DEAC and spoke to Nan Ridgway who confirmed that they are, in fact, accredited and that the website would be updated forthwith.

It took me significantly less time to verify the accreditation than it likely took you to make this incredibly weak point-by-point about how it's all a fraud and a sham.

At this point you're either not really trying or you're just trolling.

 

Because Cummings is accredited it is, by definition, not a degree mill. A person might maintain that old "RA or the highway" attitude and that's fine as long as it's clear that it's an opinion being expressed and not a fact. There are Ivy League snobs who look down at everyone else as being somehow illegitimate but we recognize them for what they are - Ivy League snobs. Steve is a snob of a different sort. After years of crusading against degree mills he has found himself without (m)any targets and so the easy thing to do is move the goalposts and create them. Now any school that doesn't have a properly formatted faculty list is a degree mill, regardless of anything else that might be true. Tedious.

 

C'mon, Jay, now you're trolling. I never said that Cummings was lying about its DEAC accreditation. I actually gave them benefit of any doubt based on DEAC's tardiness in releasing the news. In fact, let's review exactly what I wrote:

I then proceeded to trash DEAC, not Cummings. But then, I've been trashing DEAC for years. I have always thought they were mickey mouse. But I can understand your being disturbed by that since, as I recall, two of your own degrees are from DEAC schools. That could certainly explain why you upgraded those degrees at both the bachelor's and master's levels with degrees from RA schools.

FWIW, I actually did like DEAC at one time - two names ago. Once upon a time they were NHSC (the National Home Study Council), and they specialized in accrediting vocational programs and bachelor's degree programs. and they did it quite well. Then, after they became DETC, they moved into accrediting graduate programs and spread their reach into clinical programs. Today, as DEAC, they have few limits, and are regularly accrediting doctoral programs in the helping professions. As I noted above, on rare occasion they get something right (like when they busted David Lady and Loveland College). But I have, for some 30 years now, submitted that doctoral programs in the helping professions should have a residential component, and that any totally external doctoral program was suspect. That is still my position, whether some folks at DI like it or not.

So, like it or not, I have always been "RA or the highway" (at some points in my life, I've been both). The one think you'll find from me is consistency. Much as I could probably bitch about Colorado Technical University and the University of Management and Technology, they're simply not in my sphere of interest. The only reason I commented on Cummings is that they purport to offer a doctorate in the helping professions, which I have covered over the years. But c'mon, a "DBH???" Like I said, give me a break.

 

You don't have to be licensed to be a clinician though, since by definition it simply identifies that one is qualified (not necessarily state licensed/certified) to work in that setting. Many clinicians are unlicensed but qualified through their education level and are practicing in clinical settings under supervision (which you briefly touched on), which I think is the main point LA is getting at with regard to how this degree wouldn't change their licensing situation.

 

Look, you're entitled to your opinion all day long. Have at it.

You can think CTU and UMT are both crap. I'm not bothered at all by it. Admittedly, I was getting a bit nervous about my education around the time of the Everest debacle. That was one of the main reasons why I decided to use some floating credits I had for my second bachelors. My MBA, however? That wasn't an upgrade. I specifically didn't earn an MBA from UMT because I wanted my MBA to be from the best I could manage. Could I have gone higher tier than Scranton? Probably. But my issue there was that I left many years prior with an associates despite having originally been enrolled in a bachelors program. My UMT degree got me a promotion and enabled me to teach at a community college and some of the coursework counted toward my foundational courses for my MBA. I have zero complaints. My MBA was because I had some hangups with my alma mater not because "DEAC sucks."

You're free to feel that DEAC sucks. RA or the highway, and all that. Of course, I imagine you take a softer stance on standalone ATS seminaries. And I'm sure if we really dug in we'd find another exception or two to your RA or the highway rule.

Hey, come on, we agreed on Nexford. That thing stunk. But you're here calling a school a mill when it has institutional accreditation. You're citing among your reasons that the founder's wife didn't list the institution from which she earned her MSW and that everyone with a doctorate lists the title "Dr." along with the post-nominal.

Whether you like it or not, I just don't think it's fair to call an accredited school a mill. You can think it's mickey mouse all you like, but given that you made yourself into an expert in the field of mills, throwing that title around willy nilly should be a concern.

You made yourself a fine sword. It's a shame you'd be willing to dull it by banging it up against everything you see rather than only wielding it when the situation fits.

As Kizmet said, it's moving goal posts. Nations was a sham with a shady private post office box that would never get accredited. Then it became accredited and your issue was that you don't like "online universities." Now this place is a shame because of the formatting of their faculty pages. Oh, it's accredited? Well, that accreditor sucks so it doesn't count.

For better or worse, this patchwork accreditation system is what we have. And the USDOE doesn't set RA above any other accreditor. And even RA isn't really sufficient any more for some programs. Oh no, my MBA would, to many at least, not be worth the paper it was printed on (let alone massive price tag) were it not AACSB accredited as well.

Cummings was a professor in this space at a recognized university. He took his program and spun off on his own to offer this one doctorate. We would be having no issues with him serving as an advisor for this program in any other situation. It would be like if you offered a standalone doctoral program in making a scene. You've got the credentials and the experience. If anyone can further the field it would be you. So why object?

 

Again, I never said that. (I wish people would stop trying to put words in my mouth.) If anything, I said that I have no opinion of CTU and UMT, just as I generally have no opinions about business programs – they’re simply not my thing. It’s quite clear that both your CTU and UMT degrees have served you well over the years.

In other words, you apparently had more hang-ups about UMT than I did. But seriously, if I were going for prestgiege I probably would have gone for a school down the street from me (Syracuse) than one that is over 100 miles south of me (Scranton). On the other hand, you obviously had a lot of fondness over the years for our Jesuit friends to the south, and IMO, that fully justifies choosing Scranton over Syracuse. (I have the same fondness for King’s, just a bit farther south than Scranton.)

Quite honestly, I don’t know of any standalone ATS seminaries, although I’m sure a few exist. I was never into ATS one way or the other, although I taught at an RA/ATS school. But if you think I’m hard on DEAC, you should have read what I wrote years ago about TRACS – a full book, and one which hung up TRACS’ reapproval by DoEd until they straightened their act out.

And finding another exception? I think I’ve been clear on the notion that there are exceptions to every rule. I’ve already cited the one about DEAC and its handling of the William Loveland debacle. But I think DEAC has gone beyond its effective scope in terms of the programs they accredit these days. If they had stuck to accrediting art programs where you draw Sparky the squirrel (or whomever) I wouldn’t have a problem with them. But accrediting human services doctorates? I’ve been consistent about my opposition to totally external programs of that nature for a few decades now.

Exactly, and I stand by it. When a school is negligent in providing total disclosure about faculty credentials, I find it highly suspect.

I can give you a plethora of reasons, and have not even covered a few of them. For example, even though it’s called an institute, their web site refers to it as a university. I’ve already discussed here what makes up a legitimate university, and Cummings does not meet that criteria. Next, I object to schools that founders name after themselves. I don’t care whether it’s Cummings, Keiser, or Sullivan – they all stink to the high heavens. Why? Because I said so. Fourth, I object to for-profit colleges and so-called online universities. Why? Again, because I do. They’re all the spawn of Satan. Why? Because I just like the phrase. But that argument is not relevant here, since I recall Cummings being non-profit. Fifth, I object to entrepreneurs. I find the mere term to be offensive. Why? Because I don’t like it. Nor do I like schools that use public relations web sites as a marketing tool. Like Cummings does at https://www.prlog.org/12661664-cummings-graduate-institute-for-behavioral-health-studies-celebrating-two-years.html.

In short, you can bet your ass that over a period of almost 30 years since I graduated for the last time, I’ve become highly opinionated. Why? ‘Cause it’s damn fun to be highly opinionated, especially when people take me more seriously than I take myself. So there.

 

Heh, yeah, that's what I was swinging for, you just put it better than I could. And to that end, they pay the non-licensed less money to do the same job.

 

That's an excellent point, and it's exactly this sort of thing that settled my non-desire to worry outside this forum about these made-up crises. No matter what, there will always be some supposed problem with the degree you earned, and it's important to note that the person in this situation has a problem with ALL online education, nevermind that this is a board pretty much dedicated to the subject. It's like I said in another post, how crazy is it that someone would expect you to feel bad about a legitimate, legitimately earned college degree? The very thought is beyond ridiculous.

 

I admit that some of my feelings toward unaccredited religious degrees are not popular here. That's cool. I'm open to debate on those.

This one, though, come on. We're raking this guy's family through the coals because we don't know where his wife earned her MSW? Or because the "institute" uses the word "university" on its website?

Who would want this degree? People for sure. Without getting back into the murky clinician thing, take my wife as an example. LMHC in a job that absolutely doesn't require a doctorate. Could it enhance her professional life? Probably on some level. There's clearly a market or they wouldn't have any enrollments. I'm just glad it isn't another DBA.

 

Yes, on both accounts, and then some. We also don't know where she earned her bachelor's degree. To wit:

So we rake her and the rest of the board through the coals because her bio states that she "attended" UC Berkeley rather than "graduated from" UC Berkeley. Then it totally omits the source of her master's. Then it addresses her as "Doctor Cummings" based on an honorary degree. And it identifies her not only as a board member, but as the Secretary/Treasurer of their, um, "university."

In short, it's bullshit. All of it. And if you get enough bits of bullshit in the same place, the entire school is bullshit.

Like I said, I take words literally. And that means reading both what is there and what is not there.

 

Reading one definition of a university, it's just an institution with multiple colleges. Any school with that setup would qualify. I could see making a deal of schools that don't make that mark, but lots of online schools have this setup. I think it's just that it's online and he has a problem with online education in general so nothing an online school does can ever be right if a person takes that stance.

I realize that every degree has to get its start somewhere. It doesn't appear that this one has been around long as the earliest mention of it anywhere I can find is back in 2012. While I don't expect there to be thousands of schools offering it necessarily, only a handful of schools are. I guess it's just a question of if you want to be one of the few taking a new journey, although some on another psychology forum talk about one of the issues being that it isn't a new journey just an old journey (other programs having had the same/similar offerings) wrapped up in a new name.

 

The person with the problem with online education here earned his undergrad largely by portfolio, followed by an "external" Master's, followed by "nontraditional" doctorate (in two years part time) from UI&U (which is both an "institute" and a "university"). Now, we all recognize his degrees as notable achievements they are, and him a pioneer; it just baffles the mind that he of all people would trash others for getting credentials that are essentially equivalents of his own, save for advances in delivery technology. This may very well be how turning intu a cranky old man looks like.

 

The rationale for developing the DBH was to fill the gaps in the training of Psychologists, who were thought to lack the education and training to work within the healthcare system, interacting collaboratively with medical healthcare providers (ie, physicians, etc) to educate and treat patients with behavioral issues associated with their specific medical conditions.

 

In regard to Levicoff's unrelenting attacks against DETC and online for-profit schools, it is actually inconsequential and not worthy of a response. He obviously has a right to be hyper-opiniated but to what end? To defend against the fact that his doctorate and the school granting his degree, although regionally accredited at the time of his attendance, was not thought of as being very credible?

Most significantly, what has Levicoff accomplished over the past twenty years with his RA degree, and how has it contributed in a positive manner to any one's life, other than to bolster his self-esteem by repetitively " reminding" us that he possesses a RA doctoral degree?

Furthermore, what professional certifications or licenses does Levicoff possess in career, clinical, social and human services, that adds credibility to his opinions that he presents as facts in regard to the Cummings Institute. California Southern Unuversity's Psy.D program, etc? In fact none.

So, he uses this forum to express his animus and disdain towards practically every subject raised by posters, but we can choose not to listen.

 

Please provide specific examples of your statement that "many clinicians" not being licensed " ...but qualified through their education level and are practicing in clinical settings under supervision... "?

 

Hmmmm. I thought it was pretty common knowledge, especially considering how many of these programs have been available from colleges across the country that don't lead to any kind of licensure.



Overview
Responsible for providing mental health services to child, adolescent, adult and geriatric age groups on an outpatient basis.
Under the direct supervision of the Clinical Manager, is responsible for services provided to a caseload of clients for a designated shift, 40 hours per week working late nights if needed to best serve the client. The employee is subject to overtime and call back as required.

Qualifications
EDUCATION:
Master’s degree in Social Work, Counseling, Psychology, or other related field preferred.

====



Responsibilities include:

• Engaging and assessing high-needs youth and their families
• Facilitating treatment meetings and developing individualized treatment plans
• Creating safety plans collaboratively with youth, family, and their community supports
• Coordinating treatment and clinical care with community based providers and residential programs
• Delivering family therapy and support through evidence-based treatment (e.g. Motivational Interviewing, DBT, Attachment, Self-Regulation and Competency-ARC)
• Providing crisis response and support
• Collaboratively planning and providing treatment as a team

CHD offers excellent benefits to our valued employees. Some of the benefits you can expect in this position are:

• Excellent salary- $42,000 to 44,000 annual salary, based on experience level (Non-Fee-for service salary)
• No productivity requirements
• Paid time off and 8 paid holidays
• Medical and Dental Insurance
• Supportive and fun team atmosphere
• Internal and external training opportunities; Funds are available for staff to use
• Weekly Licensed Supervision provided (LICSW and LMHC)

Please upload a cover letter along with resume telling us about yourself and your interest in the position

• Masters Degree in related field, licensure a bonus

 

This probably doesn't matter too much, but I'd like to clarify because it causes confusion among the trolls.

This was John's survey. I got involved when I read the results and offered to do some post facto statistical analyses. I don't have any of that stuff lying around anymore--it was 18 years ago. But I recall finding some cool results after employing some inferential statistical methods. (Bonferroni Correction? Seriously? )

On another small note (that seems to confuse the trolls), this work had nothing to do with my doctoral dissertation at Union. This research was with university admissions officials and was pretty straight-forward. Mine was with HR professionals and was a pretty complex experiment--the designs were totally different.

I earned my Union PhD when it was still under the old model--learner-centered--where the learner and his/her committee designed (a) what was to be learned, (b) how it was to be mastered, and (c) how mastery was to be demonstrated. This was while Union was emerging from the debacle created by the Ohio Board of Regents, but before implementing changes that would pull the doctorate away from the learner-centered ideal. I'm grateful for having earned a degree in the spirit of Roy Fairfield. You cannot know how that experience--not the degree; the experience--enriched both my life and my appreciation for the roots of nontraditional higher education (my specialization in my Union program). If you weren't there--and Steve was--you just cannot know. Sorry.

(NB: I earned a second doctorate--the Doctor of Social Science (in human resource development) from the University of Leicester in the UK. I created both a grounded theory about Chief Learning Officers and a paradigm for evaluating and understanding executive roles from just about any professional bent. That was in 2015. What I learned from my Union experience was vital to my success at Leicester, despite a totally different thesis subject and the deployment of qualitative methods instead of quantitative ones. Yet for me they are one thing, and I am grateful.)

 

Such a low salary? Well, this must be an entry-level salary.
The average salary for Clinician - master's level is 31$ an hour about 60K + while most experienced workers make up to $102,532 per year.

The typical County Eligibility Worker II salary is $42,592. experienced workers make up to $60,300 per year.

Education requirements:
Education: Completion of sixty (60) semester units of coursework that is acceptable within the United States' accredited college or university system.

AND

Experience: One (1) year of full-time, paid work experience equivalent to that gained as an Eligibility Worker with the County.

OPTION 2:

Education: Completion of thirty (30) semester units of coursework that is acceptable within the United States' accredited college or university system.

AND

Experience: One (1) year of full-time, paid work experience equivalent to that gained as an Eligibility Worker with the County.
AND

Experience: One (1) year of full-time, paid work experience determining eligibility for loans, financial assistance, unemployment benefits, veterans' benefits, publicly or privately financed health, counseling, or social services.