If Michigan Needs More Social Workers, Can We Afford to Make the Education Required to Become One Harder to Finance?
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Imagine sitting in a waiting room, hoping to see a therapist or social worker who can help you through a mental health concern. Now imagine being told the next available appointment is weeks or months away because there simply aren't enough professionals to meet the demand.
For the people who need behavioral health services, workforce shortages are not an abstract policy issue. They mean longer waits, fewer providers accepting new clients, and fewer professionals available to serve communities that need them.
Michigan is already experiencing this shortage. The state is working to address the shortage of mental health professionals, including investing millions of dollars to grow the behavioral health workforce. But as Michigan invests in its behavioral health workforce, new federal policies could counter that progress.
Under federal rules that went into place on July 1, social work and many counseling programs are not included in the current list of professional-degree programs that qualify for higher federal student loan limits. By limiting how much students can borrow to finance these degrees, the policy could make graduate education inaccessible to some students, reducing the number of future professionals entering these already-strained fields. Yet the decision to leave these programs off the list does not align with the core characteristics the U.S. Department of Education itself uses to describe professional degrees: preparing students to enter a profession, requiring skills beyond those normally expected from a bachelor’s degree, and generally requiring professional licensure.
Social work meets those characteristics. Social workers pursue specialized education beyond the bachelor’s level, enter a distinct profession and, depending on their area of practice, must meet state licensing requirements. The Department received extensive comments to this point, from students, practitioners, and behavioral health organizations. The Department acknowledged those concerns but ultimately maintained its decision to exclude Masters of Social Work and Doctor of Social Work programs from the professional-degree classification.
That decision matters. Social work is a licensed profession and an essential part of Michigan’s behavioral health workforce, yet social work students are now experiencing roadblocks to accessing the funds needed to complete these degrees.
But that isn’t all. There is now another concern that could have even broader consequences.
The federal government has announced it will measure the earnings of graduate (masters) level programs to determine if they will have access to federal loans. For programs that fail the earnings measure in two out of three years, it can mean a complete loss of access to federal Direct Loans for at least two years.
Early findings already show that social work programs are falling below this earnings benchmark. Concerningly, the Department is evaluating the earnings benchmark based on workers with a bachelor's degree, not a master's degree. This is important for social work and counseling programs because bachelor's- and master's-level degrees are different levels of education, training, and professional preparation, and they lead to different wages.
In other words, the earnings of bachelor's-level social workers and counselors are being used to determine whether master's-level social work and counseling programs meet the standard for continued access to federal student loans. That raises a fundamental concern about how we measure the value of education in professions that society urgently needs. Social workers with an MSW can pursue clinical practice, research, teaching, administration, policy, and other specialized careers. Their earnings can vary considerably depending on the path they take. A single earnings measure may not fully capture the value of that education or the workforce those programs prepare.
At LifeWays, we envision a fully integrated healthcare network that supports individuals in our community to reach their full potential. That vision depends on having a strong behavioral health workforce capable of providing care when people need it.
And the consequences extend beyond students and universities. The people who need behavioral health services don't experience a federal student loan rule as a line in a regulation. They experience it as a potential for longer waits for appointments, fewer providers accepting new clients, or a community mental health program struggling to fill an open position.
Michigan has an estimated 530 annual openings for mental health and substance use social workers, and this is with the state investing in programs designed to increase the number of professionals entering this workforce. We should be careful that federal policies intended to protect students from taking on unmanageable debt do not unintentionally make it harder to educate and recruit the professionals Michigan needs.
Protecting students from excessive debt is a legitimate and important goal. But so is making sure that the way we measure educational value accurately reflects the professions we depend on. Before these changes have the potential to affect access to graduate education and the behavioral health workforce, policymakers should take another look at how professional degrees are classified and how earnings are measured for graduate programs.
Because ultimately, this is not just about student loans or regulatory definitions. It is about whether Michigan will have enough qualified professionals to answer the phone, fill the appointment slot, and sit across from the person who needs help.
Sincerely,
Cassanda Watson, CEO, LifeWays