Social Work Is No Longer a "Professional Degree": How This Impacts You

Welcome to another episode of Social Workers Rise. It is your host, Catherine. Today we're talking about the fact that social work is no longer considered a professional degree. And how this impacts you, why the heck should you care? It is your host, Catherine Moore here. I've been hosting this podcast Social Workers Rise since 2020. I am an LCSW, podcaster, course content creator, author, speaker, therapist, all of the things. And today we're just going to get a little update on what is going on with this. So the information that I'm giving you here is an overview from the NASW and also the CSWE, the Council on Social Work Education. They have submitted some updates and some advocacy alerts. And I'm just going to, I know you don't have time to be reading all this. So I'm going to give you the brief overview of what's happening. This year, the Department of Education has determined that social work among other degrees, including nursing, is no longer considered a quote, professional degree. And what this means is that starting July 1st of 2026, social work students will have lower federal student loan limits, meaning they won't be able to borrow as much money as they were before. So the limits will be $20,500 per year, with a total limit of $100,000 for their student loans. Whereas this is before people who have quote, professional degrees, will be able to borrow double that. So this sounds like a lot of money, but social work degrees are expensive. The Urban Institute estimates that 24% of social work students pursuing a master's degree borrowed more than the current annual limit of 20,500. 24%. That's a lot. And 31% of MSW borrowers exceeded that annual limit. So this is not good. And I'm going to break this down why. If you're kind of like, I don't know why this applies to me, Catherine. I'm going to tell you why. Okay. So the reason that this all came about, why social work was declassified, is the Department of Education is claiming that you can start a career in social work at the bachelor's level. And that is enough. And that we don't need to have access for the master's level or the doctoral level. So the problem with this is that you cannot actually have a full social work career if you only have a bachelor's in social work. It requires a master's or a doctorate license or level in order to do independent tasks, such as assessment of clients, diagnosis of mental health conditions, diagnosis of behavioral disorders and treatment or psychotherapy without supervision. So if you only have a bachelor's, you cannot be assessing and diagnosing and providing treatment to clients. That's why this is so important because if we're talking about making this education less accessible to people, that means we're going to have less mental health professionals in our country at a time where we are already really struggling. We are already behind in our in our need for social workers. So we're significantly lacking in this country of social work professionals. So this is overall going to make social work education less accessible, especially to low income folks and black and brown folks. It's going to we're going to pause here to take a quick listen to a word from our sponsors. Hey social workers, are you looking for clinical supervision or hoping to offer it? Check out Rise Directory. It's the National Hub connecting associate social workers with licensed clinical supervisors, making it super easy to find your right match in your state. Head over to rise directory.com and see how it can help you grow in your career. You know, a lot of social workers think their employer's insurance has them covered, but here's the thing. That policy is really there to protect the organization, not you. That's why I always recommend having your own coverage with a trusted organization, such as HPSO. Their professional liability insurance is designed for social workers and it follows you wherever you work. It's peace of mind you just can't put a price on. Talk them out at hpso.com/sw rise. It's going to make it harder to get student loans. So when I'm trying to say this, if people cannot afford the education, they're not going to get it. If people cannot get the private student loans, then they're not going to be getting the education. They're going to be more expensive and they're not going to qualify for the public service loan forgiveness program either. I know there's a lot of people who enrolled in this program, the PSFL, public service loan forgiveness. And this was a program that if they worked for 10 years in a nonprofit or government business, and they made their payments on time for their student loans and the rest of the student loan would be forgiven. The private loans are not going to qualify for this. This means that going forward, there's going to be less people entering the field of social work. It's going to be less workforce available, meaning that we're going to have more work. We're going to have higher case loads, higher workloads because there's just not enough social workers to do the jobs. That means that this is going to have an impact on the people that we serve to with less quality programs, higher weight times, less access to community programs. And when we're talking about high need individuals, people who are in crisis, people who need support now today, this workforce shortage is going to impact them the most. They're really, really going to be the ones to feel this. So, this makes my heart sad, this is happening, but here we are. So what we're doing, the social work field is, is we're doing some advocacy efforts. And there is an action alert that was issued by the NASW. And so they are advocating for the Congressional Review Act. I actually filled out this action alert and I got a response from my congresswoman who replied with the fact that she is supporting the National Nursing Workforce Center Act, which I immediately replied to her email after I had looked this act up and saw that it excluded social work. And I gently explained that social workers are a poor part of the medical team. Look, congresswoman, do not get me on my soapbox about how social workers support the medical team and they help nurses do their jobs. They help them so much that without social workers, they nurses wouldn't be as effective as they are. Because we're addressing the mental health, we are addressing the discharges. We're making sure that the patients are not coming back, that they're not getting re-admitted because they're safe at their house. They, okay, I'm not going to sidetrack onto that. Anyway, so I replied to my congresswoman back. But what I want you to leave here is this will impact you, whether you are a social worker now or you plan to become a social worker in the future and you plan to take out student loans, then this will impact you. Even if you don't plan to take out student loans, you will be able to take out a lot of the consequences of having less people entering into social work will impact your work dynamics. It will make higher caseloads and less quality programs, furthering the burnout rate, right? Which is a whole nether topic. Since this is going to be happening, there is a critical need for retention of our current social workers. Just please only the field. Just take a break, pause if you need to, but please don't leave because we clearly need you. The other effect, because I'm also thinking, are there going to be other unintended consequences that maybe I'm going to be so bad? I'm a chronic optimist. I like to look at the bright side too. Maybe in my professional opinion, maybe. This could lead to a higher demand for social workers leading to more pay because there will be less of us and we will be more valuable. Or what I think would eventually happen is that they change the laws and the hiring process to higher less qualified individuals like coaches or somebody who doesn't really have all of the education required for the diagnosis and the therapeutic treatment and the quality assessments. I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen, but I know that this is not a good look for the field. It's not a step forward. This is like taking a steps back. My call to action for you is to open up the podcast notes in there. I have put the link to the NASW Action Center call for action. It has a form on there that you can compose a message to your own US representative in order to have them reject the Department of Education's rule on student loan limits and to support the, what was it called, Congressional Review Act. So go on there, get behind this. We need to make sure that our representatives know that we are here and we are not supporting this and we are calling for their immediate action. If this episode was helpful for you, if you learned something from this, go ahead and share this with a friend, text it to them, share it on social media. You can find me on social media. I'm at social workers rise. And with that, that is all my friend. I will see you next week. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of social workers rise. Make sure that you subscribe to the podcast. It is a quick, short way to support the podcast and to make sure that you get updates and notified when new episodes come out. Also, if you are interested in career resources for social workers, definitely join the email resource list. That is going to be your next step from here. And if you liked this episode, if you got something from it, if it reminded you of somebody that needs to hear it, please share it with them. Lastly, this is not associated with therapy or clinical supervision. This is only for informational and entertainment purposes.