MFT Program Culture and Why It Matters
Trying to assess whether an MFT graduate program is right for you can be a maddening endeavor. There are all the logistical factors to consider—online or in-person, day classes or not, part-time or full-time, and so on. And then there are financial considerations—how much is the tuition, and is there any financial aid available? But perhaps the most difficult factor to assess before you’re actually in the program is the program’s culture. It’s a nebulous concept that doesn’t lend itself to lists or keywords, so what I’ll attempt to do here is give you an idea of the general ways in which programs differ culturally and what questions to ask to better understand it before you apply.
PRIVATE PRACTICE (PP) VS. COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH (CMH)
As I’ve said elsewhere on this blog, the state of California has so many requirements for MFT programs that most programs don’t really have much flexibility to offer anything beyond those requirements, so the actual contents of each program are very, very similar. However, whether programs expect graduates to go into PP or CMH after graduation does have an effect.
For example, I had many colleagues at my field site who attended Antioch University in Los Angeles, and they described how it was a foregone conclusion that they would go into PP after graduation—and most of them did! In fact, they said that job opportunities in CMH were not really discussed, and as of now, on Antioch’s sample course schedule for their MFT program, they do not have a class listed that seems to cover CMH in-depth.
CSUN, on the other hand, had an entire course called “Community Mental Health” (or at least they did when I was there). My professor for that course told us on the first day that the focus of the course would be to prepare us to apply for CMH positions. We learned how to fill out Department of Mental Health (DMH) paperwork, a job skill that is highly prized by CMH agencies contracted with DMH. They’re more likely to hire new MFT graduates with no CMH background if they can demonstrate some familiarity with the paperwork. The director of our program often said that she recommended working in CMH for ten years before trying to go into PP!
Now, Antioch doesn’t have a specific class on PP (which is a real problem for those with no experience running a small business), but you can see how the general culture of that program better prepares students to go into PP after graduation, while CSUN’s emphasis is on agency work. How either focus affects the program culture is hard to pin down, but I would say that programs with more of a CMH focus tend to attract students who want to work with underserved or marginalized communities or more severe mental health issues. Programs with a private practice focus, on the other hand, are probably more likely to attract students who are career-changers or those who want to work with less severe mental health issues. Neither is better or worse—it simply has to do with what kind of career you see yourself having.
To determine whether a program is more PP-focused or CMH-focused, look at the classes listed for the program in the most recent academic catalog. Are there any classes on CMH? Or are there any classes that focus on developing professional business skills, like marketing? You can also ask program representatives for statistics on how many graduates go right into private practice after graduation instead of community mental health.
COHORT COHESIVENESS
Another factor that’s very hard to assess is whether students form strong relationships with each other or not. I strongly believe that developing your professional network while you’re in your graduate program is really important, and a key part of that is developing relationships with your classmates. They can help support you emotionally during the program, find jobs after graduation, and refer clients to you for the rest of your career. But some programs are more conducive to these relationships forming than others. CSUN’s program, for example, is a lock-step program—with few exceptions, our class started and ended the program together. We took the same classes at the same time, though we were evenly split between two professors for each course to keep class size manageable. Many of us ended up forming strong friendships that will last a very long time.
Other programs have a more flexible program, which means you may not be with the same classmates from course to course. On the one hand, this means you’ll meet a lot more people, but on the other hand, it could be harder to form relationships. The same could be true for programs with large cohorts, whereas programs with small cohorts certainly face their own challenges. If you’re in a class of only six people, what happens if you happen to not gel with the others?
Again, what situation is right for you is highly dependent on, well, YOU! I encourage you to reflect on your past educational and work experiences to determine what characteristics you tend to enjoy with colleagues and what kind of MFT program cohort might be right for you. I’d also suggest trying to see whether a given program has a strong alumni network. Can a program representative put you in touch with alumni who could talk about their experiences? Are there post-graduation alumni events, or Facebook groups for alumni of specific programs? This might give you an idea of how cohesive cohorts at those programs become.
APPROACH TO TEACHING
Another really important part of program culture is the general approach to teaching taken by professors and administrators. There is no universally-accepted training approach that churns out consistently excellent MFTs, so every program follows a loose and unique blend of ideas about teaching psychotherapists that results in similar curricula being taught in very different ways. For example, some programs require academic papers in every single course, while others emphasize personal reflective writing instead. Some programs (like CSUN) incorporate evidence-based psychotherapy methods into every course, while others focus on more traditional/classical approaches (like Jungian or Adlerian psychotherapy).
Finally, some programs emphasize didactic teaching (lectures and knowledge testing), while others prefer a more experiential approach characterized by putting new concepts into practice. There are pros and cons to both approaches. Didactic teaching is probably extremely helpful to prepare for licensing exams, which is something a grad program really should do—but most people don’t usually take those exams until many years after graduation, when most of the concepts have gotten fuzzy. Experiential learning is a more learn-by-doing approach that probably better prepares students to work directly with clients. The way this has traditionally been done in MFT programs is through role-plays in class between students, though this method has not been demonstrated to have a significant impact on clinician effectiveness. There are some innovative approaches on the horizon, however, that may revolutionize how we train MFTs. One of these approaches is working with technology like mixed reality, such as the SIMPACT Immersive Learning program at CSUN. Another is the implementation of deliberate practice, which is something I learned about after graduation that I would have found extremely helpful in my program.
It’s really to hard to assess a program’s general teaching culture before enrolling. Program administrators who aren’t professors usually aren’t super familiar with this, so I would recommend trying to directly ask a professor for their thoughts. You could also try to contact a former student and ask about their experience. Did they spend most of their class time listening to lectures, or did they spend a lot of time doing hands-on practice of clinical skills?
Ultimately, you’ll need to spend some time soul-searching to determine what is most important to you in a program, and what will be a good fit for your learning style. And if you end up in a program that isn’t the best fit, don’t forget that you will have plenty of opportunities to enrich your experience extracurricularly and after graduation!
