Mandatory Continuing Education Psychology and Other Professions

When mandatory continuing education legislation was proposed for psychologists in Michigan, two years ago, we started to look around the country for arguments that had been advanced for and against its adoption and for evidence of what impact it has had in states where it has been adopted. We were surprised by what we found. (See articles, letters, and links on the left and at the bottom.)

First, proponents of MCE admitted that they could produce no evidence that mandatory continuing education has any impact whatsoever on its stated goal of protecting the public from incompetent or unethical practitioners. Not that MCE has been found to be ineffective. The interesting thing is that no one has studied the question.

Second, despite the lack of evidence that MCE is effective, the imposition of such requirements seemed to have caused little comment, let alone debate in psychology or in other professions. Internet searches yield hundreds of sites where one can purchase one’s required credits, but almost no discussion of whether such requirements are reasonable or even of what the requirements ought to be.

We are interested in promoting such discussion, and toward that end present a number of articles and letters discussing the issue of mandatory continuing education, as well as links to other sites where information on this topic is available.

We’d like to hear about the experiences of professionals who are already living with this requirement. Let us hear from you.

To contact us please either visit

our contact page or write to:

LEAPChair@AcademyProjects.org

RELATED LINKS

APA Approval of Sponsors of Continuing Professional Education for Psychologists. Criteria and Procedures Manual http://www.apa.org/ce/CPmanual.html

APA main page on CE http://www.apa.org/ce/