\n<\/p>\n
Behavioral health programs may be especially compatible with earn-and-learn strategies as the federal government and some individual states adopt stricter, measured-value accountability frameworks.<\/p>\n
Photo illustration by Inside Higher Ed | SDI Productions\/E+\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
The country\u2019s only nonprofit accredited university dedicated to apprenticeship degrees is opening a health-care college, it announced Thursday. Reach University, which launched in 2020, has thus far been focused on education, helping incumbent workers in K\u201312 schools earn degrees to become teachers while they continue to work full-time, typically as paraeducators. <\/p>\n
Just as Reach\u2019s debt-free teacher apprenticeship model is designed to address a critical shortage of educators, the Apprenticeship College of Health is set to address a critical shortage of health-care workers\u2014starting with those in behavioral health. The program will launch in Washington State, initially offering Reach\u2019s existing associate of arts degree in liberal studies with a focus on social science, embedded within a behavioral health apprenticeship that prepares learners for careers as substance use disorder professionals. <\/p>\n
Subject to accreditor and state approval, Reach expects to add stackable bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degree pathways in health-care fields.<\/p>\n
The National Center for the Apprenticeship Degree, housed at Reach, recently helped the College of New Jersey launch its own master\u2019s-level registered apprenticeship for clinical mental health counseling, the first in the U.S. Aspiring counselors earn their degree while gaining paid, hands-on clinical experience.<\/p>\n
Behavioral health \u201csuffers from the same types of labor shortages that we\u2019ve seen in teaching and, of course, across other occupations in health care,\u201d said Reach president Joe Ross. \u201cIt also has a lot of front-line workers\u2014care case workers, addiction counselors, behavioral health technicians\u2014who could be the talent pool for licensed counselors in the future. So we really want to build out that talent pool because, currently, licensed counseling is something you do with a master\u2019s in social work or a master\u2019s in counseling. And the typical pathways into those fields are very, very expensive, with very, very high tuition.\u201d<\/p>\n
The National Center for Health Workforce Analysis projects the following provider shortages in behavioral health by 2038:<\/p>\n
Estimates address only current usage rates. Factoring in unmet need results in more severe shortages. The center estimates that an additional 136,350 psychologists would be required by 2038 to meet all unmet need, versus 99,840 for current use levels, for example.<\/p>\n
Ross said Reach is not trademarking the Apprenticeship College of Health so that other institutions can follow suit. <\/p>\n
A recent report by New America found that teaching and registered nursing are relatively well represented among the country\u2019s roughly 600 degree apprenticeship programs. But behavioral health programs may be especially compatible with earn-and-learn models as the federal government and some individual states adopt stricter, measured-value accountability frameworks. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which takes effect July 1, academic programs that do not meet a new \u201cdo no harm\u201d earnings threshold for graduates risk losing access to federal direct loan funding. <\/p>\n
The new federal program-level earnings bar is relatively low: Some 95\u00a0percent of offerings are estimated to clear it, with undergraduate certificate programs, such as those in cosmetology, disproportionately at risk. But preliminary data on at-risk degree programs point to potential problems in some caring fields, including behavioral health. At the two-year degree level, 48\u00a0percent of programs in human development, family studies and related services are estimated to fail the earnings test, according to an analysis by the American Enterprise Institute. Four-year degree programs will largely pass, but 64\u00a0percent of master\u2019s degree\u2013level programs in mental and social health services and allied professions could fail.<\/p>\n
Another recent analysis of outcomes for Texas graduates flagged negative, cost-adjusted financial returns on investment for graduate degrees (excluding Ph.D.s) in social work, clinical psychology and psychology, as well as curriculum and instruction. <\/p>\n
Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at AEI and author of the preliminary earnings-test analysis, told Inside Higher Ed<\/em> that the apprenticeship model \u201ccan be very well suited for some of these fields of study where the earnings might be a little bit lower, but we still think that the program is valuable because it\u2019s filling a societal need.\u201d Additionally, he said, \u201cyou need a lot of hands-on experience if you\u2019re going to get really good at these professions.\u201d <\/p>\n Reach has grown from 67 candidates in 2020 to more than 3,400 learners across eight states. Washington makes nine. Federal Pell Grant\u2013eligible students have a graduation rate of 72\u00a0percent, according to Reach, higher than for similarly situated peers.<\/p>\n As for whether it\u2019s higher education\u2019s responsibility to address the larger market problem of low wages for high-need jobs, Cooper said, \u201cWe can have a multipronged strategy here.\u201d Reach and other institutions can build debt-free training options via apprenticeships while, in the longer term, \u201cIf we believe that we need more teachers or social workers, then the right answer is probably to pay them more and attract more people to the profession.\u201d Rethinking licensing requirements or expectations tied to advanced degrees in lower-paying fields might also be in order, he said. <\/p>\n The earnings data required under OBBBA can help illuminate some of these issues and force \u201cdifficult conversations\u201d beyond higher education, Cooper also said: \u201cIt can be a wake-up call to policymakers to say, \u2018Wow, this program\u2019s earnings outcomes are not great, and maybe we should try to do something about the fact that people are taking on a whole lot of debt when they\u2019re not really earning enough to justify that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Colleges and universities are increasingly leaning into apprenticeships, adding apprenticeship degrees, delivering related technical instruction for nondegree programs and serving as administrative sponsors for registered apprenticeships. Apprenticeships in general have grown in the U.S. over the last decade, but they haven\u2019t yet scaled as they have in peer nations. That\u2019s due in part to challenges with employer buy-in. This could be changing, however, amid accelerating federal interest in and funding for apprenticeships in high-need areas, including health care. Reach is working with the Training Fund, a union-based, multi-employer organization to scale its behavioral health program.<\/p>\n According to federal data, there are currently 16,847 active participants in registered health care and social assistance apprenticeships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Behavioral health programs may be especially compatible with earn-and-learn strategies as the federal government and some individual states adopt stricter, measured-value accountability frameworks. Photo illustration by Inside Higher Ed | SDI Productions\/E+\/Getty Images The country\u2019s only nonprofit accredited university dedicated to apprenticeship degrees is opening a health-care college, it announced Thursday. Reach University, which launched<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[5396,24165,24164,6338,37,9269],"class_list":{"0":"post-48113","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-accountability","9":"tag-behavioral","10":"tag-debtfree","11":"tag-era","12":"tag-health","13":"tag-pathways"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Higher Ed Solutions to Market Problems?<\/h2>\n