On the Terrible Vibes in Service-Related Graduate School Programs
Quick-fire observations on fields in crisis
The vibes within graduate programs in service-based fields are strange to say the least. Here are some impressions I’ve gained over my time in one of them:
With individuals in these fields (e.g. social work, school psychology, nursing) increasingly under immense pressure due to worsening workplace conditions and underfunding, prospective service professionals in graduate programs face a bleak picture. Grad programs chug along with the same curricula based on accreditation, while the world shifts drastically around them. Graduate students struggle through demanding coursework, often incurring significant student debt to do so, all in order to enter a field whose reality seems so far from the image depicted in school.
For programs that talk so much about change and usually at least pay lip service to progressive ideas, the defining educational features of these programs (rigidly formatted assignments, didactic one-sided lecturing, mandatory online discussion boards, quantified grading systems) remain so traditional, so stale, that their structure ends up discouraging the very change they claim to pursue. This is not to mention that they largely maintain an ideological commitment to the platonic ideal of “professionalism”, a truly bewildering attitude considering the current state of global polycrisis and the term’s historical implications for acceptable conduct in the workplace—most notably, meekness or agreeability in accordance with one’s gender expression, team-player attitude that puts the organization first, and the suppression of personal emotions as well as any views that could be considered political.
Academic assignments in these programs work on their own terms, more faithfully serving the needs of program licensure requirements than the educational process of students. As a result, assignments generally function as tribute demands to students. Perform for me, and I’ll evaluate you. Perform well enough and be awarded with a degree. The educational process is not a cooperative venture; it’s a one-sided audition.
In my experience as a graduate student in school psychology, most students in these programs are so overwhelmed by the chaos and injustice in the world around them that they mentally cannot handle zooming out and engaging in critical discussion about how their given field is fully intertwined within the systems of oppression they claim to resist. Instead, we students retreat to the comfort of jargon, finding solace in repeat different variations of the same calorically empty academic parables. This language, which we’ve learned that our professors love to hear, is comforting in its provision of the illusion that we are on the front lines of change-making while remaining within the confines of academic buildings on the campuses of major universities.
Far from change-making, we grad students live with our heads in the grad school sand. In the field of school psychology, this involves going to our little conferences, talking about professional “best practices” from our seats in the political cuck chair as public education budgets are slashed, and thinking up new ways that we can refine our data collection methods for reports that nobody reads and even fewer actually do anything with. Life in these programs is a life of performance, the phoniness of which is actually comforting to many students, as the confines of the performance allow us to ignore painful realities that would prompt us to challenge the foundational aspects of our lives: how/if we see our work making a real difference in the world, what we want from our lives, and what we actually want to spend our time on.
Something graduate programs are adept at are convincing themselves and students that they are on the frontlines of change, or that they can use their degree or stature within the profession to make meaningful change. A question that graduate students eventually have to grapple with is the following:
“Can I come to terms with the fact that nothing I do within the confines of my service profession can ever truly be inducing of systemic change beyond meaningless incrementalism—let alone be radical or revolutionary—because every single move in these professions is regulated and evaluated by powerful institutions (e.g. our universities, the National Association of School Psychologists, the American Psychological Association, etc.) who ultimately answer to and depend on the exact structures that we claim to be resisting?”