Rosemary Lyndall Wemm,
(e-mail: rosemary "at" lyndall.wemm.org)
B.A. (Hons.Psych.)(Aus); M.A. (Neuropsych.)(Aus); Reg. Clin. Neuropsych.[W.A.]

Comments and Critiques of this Article

Not long ago the West Australian Psychologists' Registration Board asked for feedback on some of its proposals. Among the replies published in the broadsheet was a lament from one psychologist who argued that if the Board continued to register 4-year-trained psychologists then Australian psychologists would continue to be among the worst trained in the world.

I’ve no doubt she (or he) was comparing us with America.  Everyone knows, don’t they, that a doctoral degree is the basic degree required for licensing of psychologists in most States of America. The absolute minimum requirement is a Master’s Degree in a branch of professional psychology, and only a handful of  States will accept this. Unlike Australia, no American State will license a psychologist who only has a four year Bachelor Degree with a major in psychology.  Unlike America, the basic degree required for practising psychology in Australia is a four year psychology Bachelor degree plus two years experience or a six year professional psychology Masters degree. As far as obtaining permission to practise psychology, holding a PhD or a research Masters degree is no more advantageous than holding an approved 4-year Bachelor degree. [See URL's listed below for Psychologist Registration and Licensing Boards on the Net.]

Many Australians firmly believe that American standards of education are generally lower than Australian standards. A search around the Internet shows that there are many prestigious authorities which do not support this. [You will find URL’s for the sites mentioned in this article in the list of references at the end.]

The Victorian Ministry of Education has recently gone to great pains to promote the Victorian Year 12 as equivalent to the American Year 12. Ministry officials wrote to most major universities in the United States asking if they would admit VCE graduates to the first year of an American Bachelor Degree. Most American universities replied that they would. Interestingly, most UK universities replied that they would admit VCE graduates to the first year of their programmes, too.  The maths of this is a little odd because Americans usually agree that the British system is a year ahead of theirs. 

The Australian National Office of Overseas Skills Recognition [NOOSR] (which is part of the Federal Government Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs) states that, for the purposes of immigration, they consider an American Bachelor degree to be equivalent to an Australian Bachelor degree, an Australian Masters Degree equivalent to an American Masters Degree and an American PhD equivalent to an Australian PhD. The fine print contained in a footnote or two distances the Office from the vagaries of educational institutions, professional bodies and employers who may disagree in practice, due to their legal autonomy in such matters.

And there’s no support from international accreditation authorities, either. American credential evaluation companies adhere to equivalence guidelines obtained from the (1997) UNESCO data base.  These guidelines are comparable with the information supplied by NOOSR, probably because the UNESCO pointer directs the inquirer to exactly this office.  As one of my international correspondents pointed out "your own ministry of education [sic] says that same-named qualifications in Australia and the US are equivalent".

Nor is the common Aussie belief in Australian educational supremacy supported by prestigious American universities. Admission criteria for post-graduate training in psychology at these universities uniformly equates the Australian 4 year Honours degree in psychology with an American 4 year Bachelor degree with a psychology major and the Australian professional Masters degree in psychology with an American professional Masters degree in psychology.

The admission criteria to post-graduate training at Berkeley is an American Bachelor degree with "enough undergraduate training to do graduate work in your chosen field" and a minimum of a "B" grade point average.  The minimum requirement for Australian and New Zealand students is an "Honours or bachelor's degree programme requiring at least four years.  Holders of bachelor's degrees whose programmes represent three years of study are not eligible to apply."

According to the UCLA admissions criteria, an American applicant for admission to a post-graduate degree in professional psychology should hold an American Bachelor degree with a "B" average for the third and fourth year while a foreign applicant should hold "a degree with above average scholarship from a university or university-level institution. ....  An international applicant who holds a three-year ordinary pass degree .. or a four-year degree from a technical, vocational or post-secondary specialised school should NOT apply for graduate admission."   (Strangely, there is silence on the type of major which the applicants are expected to have, which makes one wonder if an Australian with an Honours Arts Degree in Asian Studies could gain admission to a PhD in clinical psychology at UCLA).

At both these American universities, and at others like them, the holder of an Australian 2-year professional psychology Masters is given the same course credits as the holder of an American professional psychology Masters degree, that is, they are exempted from the equivalent of one year's work in a doctoral programme.

So, on the basis of this formidable set of authorities, it seems reasonably clear that Australian psychologists are extremely poorly trained in comparison with American trained psychologists.

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Let me digress for a moment, to talk about the psychological profiles of the average Australian Honours graduate in psychology.

Several years ago I ran a number of group supervision sessions for Probationary Generalist Psychologists which were also attended by Medical Interns and Psychiatric Registrars. One of the early tasks given to this somewhat diverse group was to fill out an MMPI. Identifying material was then removed and the forms were redistributed to the students for marking. When it came time for the results to be shared some of the markers usually looked a little uncomfortable. Among the bunch of near-perfect profiles would be a bunch which had blips on the PD scale. When asked to explain this phenomena the immediate response of the group was generally an embarrassed silence. Then some brave person would acknowledge that people with problems are sometimes attracted to psychology or psychiatry and the conversation would go something like this.

"How do we know they have problems? " "Well, they have an elevated PD scale, don’t they?" "What kind of problems does this scale suggest that they have?" "Well, blah, blah, blah, blah and problems with authority, I suppose." "Ah-huh. So you’d expect them to question authorities, would you?" "Well, yes." "Isn’t that what a good researcher does?" Silence. "How many people here are trained in research skills?" .. "How many of these profiles have blips on the PD scale?" .. "There seems to be some correspondence. Do you think there might be a connection?"

What generally transpired was that the medical contingency had near-perfect profiles, while the psychology graduates, trained in research skills and evaluative essay writing, almost invariably showed blips on the PD scale. An item analysis generally showed that the items responsible for lifting the scores into the "abnormal" range were those relating to unquestioning acceptance of authority.

Although this exercise was used as a practical lesson in the dangers of blindly accepting the arithmetical outputs of psychological scales in the absence of contextual, cultural and medical information about the person tested, it also underlined the basic difference between the training of medical and psychological personnel at this level. That is, Australian psychologists with a mere Honours degree in psychology are trained to question authorities, not to accept them blindly. Those with Australian Master’s and Doctoral degrees could be expected to do at least as well. So, let’s all get on with it!

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As we know, the average Australian psychologist has a four year Bachelor degree and generally no more than a professional Masters degree while the average American psychologist has a PhD and never less than a professional Master’s degree. If we accept the Australian, American and International authorities which tell us that these same-named degrees are equivalent then we would have to agree that the education of Australian psychologists is woeful in comparison with American counterparts.

Since we are all set to begin questioning authorities, let’s start from the very beginning and see for ourselves whether these equations hold up.

Over the past decade, the American educational authorities have been engaging in a seminal comparison of international achievement levels in science and mathematics among the school populations of 41 nations, excluding Britain. The first part of this mammoth project investigated the achievement levels of primary school students in Year 4, the second part contrasted the students in Year 8 and the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS Report,1998] compared the achievements of Year 12 students in these areas.

The United States did relatively well in the first of these projects [Year 4] but began to slip in the second when American Year 8 students were found to be about one year behind the rest of the world in maths and sciences. By the third study American Year 12 students were found to be about two years behind the norm for the rest of the world in their performance in science and mathematics and at the bottom of the achievement list in physics. The same pattern of comparative deficit was evident between the top American students and the top students of the other 40 countries.

In contrast, Australian and New Zealand students performed at or above the 66^th percentile.

While achievement levels in humanities are much harder to equate [because of language and cultural differences] there is no reason to assume that American students would be relatively better in these areas. By implication, US students would also be behind the rest of the Western civilised world in non-science subjects.

The American Education Department have looked for reasons to account for this embarrassing discrepancy in standards. They have generally concluded that the American emphasis on a broad general education is to blame. In the American educational system students learn a little about a lot of things and do not study subjects in depth until comparatively late in the process. The underlying philosophy is that this broad and shallow education is a good basis for life.

In contrast, Australians finish their general education at Year 10 and begin specialising from this point. We achieve a higher standard on a narrow core of academic subjects at the expense of a superficial survey of many areas. We adhere to the British-European philosophy of education which prefers to leave most non-academic subjects and "life skills" for individuals to pursue in their own time.

Regardless of the truth or usefulness of the educational philosophies behind them, the end result is that the academic achievement level of the average American High School graduate is about equivalent to that obtained by an average graduate of the Australian Year 10. That is, an American college freshman begins a Bachelor degree with an academic knowledge base which is about two years behind his or her Australian counterpart.

This difference is likely to be further compounded by the fact that admission to an American Bachelor degree is not dependent, as it is in Australia, on a mark which is calculated from a specific set of tertiary-entrance-level subjects and adjusted to reflect the student's relative position in the national Year 12 population. Entry to an American Bachelor degree is based on a student’s "grade-point average" and relative class position during the last year of American High School plus his or her mark on the Scholastic Aptitude Test [SAT]. The subjects which a student takes to achieve the grade-point average are largely irrelevant and the student’s class position depends on the size of the class, the calibre of the fellow students and the marking habits of the teachers at that school. This variation is offset by the results of the SAT to only a limited extent since it measures general ability and aptitudes rather than specific subject achievements.

Conclusion: The data do not support the hypothesis that the intake accomplishments of Australian and American candidates for the Bachelor Degree are commensurate. Instead, they support the notion that American candidates are about two years behind their Australian counterparts, at least in mathematics and science.

Although competition is fierce for entry into the Ivy League Colleges and/or Universities, most Americans end up with a Bachelor Degree from somewhere. A Bachelor’s degree is the minimum educational requirement for most American jobs and operates, in this respect, much like the Australian Higher School Certificate or equivalent. This operational practice might indicate the comparable equivalence of these two differently named qualifications. Others have made similar determinations of equivalence but some have even gone so far as to imply that an American Bachelor degree is inferior to the Australian Year 12.

An Irish medical school [The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland] advertises their intake criteria on the Internet. According to the information on their Web Pages (see reference section for details), an Australian with a good TEE score will be accepted into the usual 5 year double Bachelor course along with their British and Irish counterparts. On the other hand an American must have a high grade point average in an American Bachelor Degree to be accepted into the 6 year programme reserved for those whose educational standard needs to be upgraded prior to commencement. This equates the American B.A. with the Australian Year 11, which might seem a little harsh.

With the discrepancies between the American and Australian Year 12 already noted it should be clear that the American Bachelor Degree begins one or two years behind the starting line, at least in Maths and Science. But American Bachelor Degrees, which are all Pass Degrees, take 4 years to complete in comparison with the 3 years which it takes to complete an Australian Pass Bachelor Degree. If we stretched the Year 12 equivalences a little [after all Australia only performed around the 66^th percentile compared with the rest of the world] we could perhaps concur with NOOSR that a standard Australian Bachelor Degree is approximately equivalent to an American Bachelor Degree. However, things are a not quite so simple.

The American educational philosophy of a broad general education continues into the first level of tertiary education. American professional Bachelor degrees are a rare and dying breed and almost all professional training is done following graduation from a generalist Bachelor Degree.

As in Australia, there are two basic flavours of American generalist degree: Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science. While there is provision for specialisation the requirements for the generalist component are formidable.  At the end of the degree, the major is equivalent to no more than 1.2 years of full-time study in that speciality and the minor is equivalent to no more than 0.6 years of full-time study.

In contrast a major study in a basic Australian Bachelor of Arts or Science Degree comprises one quarter of first year, one third of second year and at least half of the third year. Those in Honours or Professional streams will usually spend two-thirds of second year and 100 percent of their third and fourth years studying in their major area. While courses vary somewhat, the sum total of the major is around 1 full time year for a terminal 3-year Pass student studying a single major, 2 full-time years for a Pass student taking a double major in the subject and 3 full-time years for a 4-year Professional or Honours student. The minor sequence, which is often chosen to be ancillary to the major study or studies, is equivalent to an American minor sequence, that is, about 0.6 of a full-time year.  In other words, an Australian "generalist" degree can be extremely specific in its course content.  Professional Bachelor Degrees [for example, B.Psych.] are generally similar or identical to a professional "generalist" degree, that is, the major study accounts for about three-quarters of the total study programme and the remaining subjects are strongly related to this area.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the amount of material which can be digested by a student is similar in every year from Year 12 to the end of the final year of a Bachelor Degree. Now let’s assume that the student’s primary area of study is physics. Because of the confines of the generalist prescription an American baccalaureate with a major in Physics will have completed the equivalent of 1.2 years of Physics study on top of the level reached at Year 12. On the other hand, an Australian with a Bachelor Degree with a double major and Honours in Physics will have studied the equivalent of 3 years of Physics on top of the level reached at Year 12. Since the Australian was already about two years more advanced than the American at the commencement of the Bachelor Degree the Australian is now up to 5 years more advanced in Physics than the American baccalaureate.

From this standpoint, the arithmetic of the Irish medical school doesn't look quite so Irish. Australians are already about two years in front of the Americans in the pre-requisite subjects of Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics. An American with a Bachelor Degree will be only 1.2 years further advanced by the end of the course, in ONE of these prerequisites. Even if it is unreasonable to assume that the amount of material a 20 year old can digest is only equivalent to the amount of material a 16 year old can digest, there is still an awful lot of ground to be made up in very little allowable time.

This assumes, of course, that we are talking about the Bachelor Degrees available at the best of the American Colleges and Universities.  The American tertiary education system [being largely private enterprise] is no-where near as regulated and uniform as it is in Australia.  A perusal of the offerings of the Bob Jones University (www.bju.edu) shows that it is possible to obtain an American Bachelor degree with a major which is not much different from sections of  the Australian Year 10 science and mathematics syllabus. You could then proceed to a Master in Science (Counselling) where you would be taught the elementary statistics required to interpret school tests along with the theories of counselling of the "great" Christian counsellors - and no-one else.

Up to this point we have been discussing the study of the physical sciences.  The study of psychology is somewhat of a special case. Except for the State of Victoria (which includes experimental psychology as a Year 12 subject), this subject is commenced in the first year of the Bachelor Degree in both Australia and America. Leaving aside the initial differences in the background knowledge of relevant maths and science subjects, let us compare the psychology studied during the two kinds of Bachelor Degree.

At the end of the fourth and final year of an American Bachelor Degree an American student who has majored in psychology will have completed the equivalent of 1.2 years of full-time study in psychology. An Australian student with a 3-year Pass degree and a single major in psychology will have completed the same amount of work by the end of their degree. On the other hand, a Professional or Honours student may reach that level as early as the end of the second year and at least by the end of the first term of the third year. By the end of the fourth year an Australian psychology Honours graduate will have completed the equivalent of 3 or more years of full-time study in psychology plus completed a research project and dissertation; they may even have a published paper to their credit. That is, the Australian graduate of a 4-year Bachelor degree in psychology will have completed about three times more psychology than the American graduate and will have done so at a consistently high level. The difference between the two systems could perhaps be summed up by saying that while an American can be described as having a 4 year Bachelor of Arts or Science Degree with a MAJOR in psychology an Australian can be described as having a 4 year Bachelor of Arts or Science Degree IN psychology.

By this stage perhaps some of you are considering whether there is more than you originally thought to that fine print mentioned in relation to NOOSR’s equations. We were, of course, considering the writings of a highly politicised department which has strong reasons for wishing to pander to the ego of a nation where status is almost as strongly linked to academic credentials as it is to one’s wealth or baseball prowess. I’m afraid the peculiar mathematics of the Victorian Ministry of Education and the ivy-league American Universities can only be assigned to ignorance – either naive or contrived.

Having used up the Bachelor Degree to extend the nation’s level of general education Americans are then faced with having to provide professional training on top of this. The professional training which is covered in professional Bachelor degrees in Australia and Europe is provided, in the United States, in coursework degrees which are confusingly called Master and Doctoral degrees, although they may contain absolutely no research component whatever.

The American Masters Degree is generally a terminal one year full-time course in a professional area subsequent to a Bachelor Degree with at least a minor in that area. A research project at or above the standard required in the fourth year of an Australian Honours Bachelor degree is rare. The course may be extended by a year if combined with another field [as is the case with school psychology] and is often extended a further year to include one year of supervised on-the-job training. At the end of a 1 year American Masters Degree in Counselling Psychology the graduate will have received about 2.2 years of full-time training in psychology. At the end of a 2 year course in Counselling Psychology the graduate will have received about 3.2 years of training in psychology which are made up of 2.2 years of academic training in psychology plus 1 year of supervised experience. At the end of a 3 year course in school psychology the graduate will have received about 2.2 years of full-time academic training in psychology, 1 year of full-time training in education and 1 year of supervised experience in school psychology.

In contrast the holder of an Australian professional Masters Degree in Counselling Psychology will have received 5 years of full-time academic training in psychology and written two research papers and/or dissertations. They will then be required to undergo 2 years of supervised experience which, unlike their American colleagues, they are unable to count as part of the years of training towards their degree. If this internship were included in the Australian degree structure then the Australian professional Masters Degree would be 4 years long and the end result would be a psychologist with 7 years of full-time training in psychology. A psychologist with 7 years full-time training in psychology is not equivalent to one who has 3 or 4 years of full-time training in the profession, in spite of the fact that the name of the degree may be the same.

Of course, if the mandatory two year post-graduate internship is added to the Australian Honours Degree in psychology then it is clear that registered Australian generalist psychologists have 5 years of full-time training in psychology. That’s rather better than the tally for American psychologists with Masters Degrees. The complaint to the West Australian Board about Australia’s lack of international comparability with regards to those with four year Bachelor Degrees is now looking rather ridiculous.

I assume that some of you have detected a pattern by now. Before you become complacent may I remind you that good psychologists must be alert for the unexpected.

There are three kinds of doctoral degrees in the United States: the Doctorate in Psychology [D.Psy.], the professional PhD [PhD] and the research PhD [PhD].  In all cases the prerequisite requirement is an American Bachelor Degree with at least a minor [and generally a major] in psychology and a very good overall grade point average.   While there is some variability between degree granting bodies the general plan of these degrees is as follows.

An American Doctorate in Psychology is generally a 3 to 4 year full-time coursework degree, usually with a specific professional emphasis [eg clinical psychology] and usually without a significant research project or thesis/dissertation. One of these years may be an intern year. Thus the American D.Psych. graduate has received about 4-5 years of full-time training in psychology including one year of supervised experience. This is roughly equivalent to the training received by an Australian post-graduate diplomate or Honours graduate with two years of post-graduate supervised experience. In other words, it is at the borderline of the minimum requirements for registration as a practising psychologist in Australia.  If the mandatory professional internship were included in the Australian psychology course then the Australian Bachelor of Psychology would be a 6 year course and easily equated with the American D.Psych.  In Australia, psychology stands alone as being the only health related profession, except medicine, which does not register its graduates immediately upon graduation and which does not include the mandatory internship period as part of the professional degree [c/f physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech pathology, chiropractic, vet. science, dentistry, social work, optometry].  It is also the only health-related profession which requires five or more years of training prior to generalist registration [c/f. medicine, dentistry, veterinary science, chiropractic, osteopathy] but does not allow its registered professionals to use a courtesy title of "doctor".

The equation of the Australian Honours or Professional Bachelor Degree in psychology with an American Doctorate in psychology really shouldn't surprise anyone who is aware that all basic professional training is done in a Bachelor degree in Australia, while all basic professional training is done in a Masters or Doctoral degree in America.  In Australia, courses in Medicine, Chiropractic, Veterinary Science and Dentistry are long Bachelor degrees.   In America they are doctoral degrees.  In Australia Law, Optometry, Speech Pathology, Occupational Therapy and Social Work are 4 year Bachelor degrees; in America Law is a doctoral degree and the rest are Masters degrees.   Australia's peculiar stance in relation to in-course practicums at both undergraduate and post-graduate level leaves Australian psychologists at a significant disadvantage.  The reasons for this appear to be largely historical and related to the fact that Australian universities are reluctant or unable to employ professional psychologists from the non-PhD stream to teach professional psychology at any level.  Refusal to allow professional psychologists to use a courtesy title appears to be related to this phenomena.   Americans have no such problem because they make no distinction in the name of the degree given to graduates from the two streams.

An American PhD in research psychology is generally a 5 year full-time course in psychology following an American Bachelor degree with a major in psychology and evidence of fledgling research skills. The first three years are coursework, including laboratory work and minor research projects, and the last two are reserved for a major dissertation. The American graduate of a research-based PhD will have spent approximately 6 years of full-time training in psychology. This is roughly equivalent to the training received by an Australian Honours graduate who then completes an Australian PhD in the prescribed 3 years. On one point NOOSR was describing an actual, not-for-the-convenient-purposes-of-anything, equivalence. Providing we are talking about research degrees, an American PhD in psychology is pretty much the same as an Australian PhD in psychology. That aberrant fact probably accounts for a great deal of the confusion over the American/Australian equivalence's in psychology.

Of course, we could put another spanner in the works by considering the Australian who graduates with a First Class Honours Bachelor Degree in psychology, proceeds straight into a PhD and completes the whole thing at First Class level in the minimum one year period: a total of 4 years of full-time training in psychology. Although I know of at least one psychologist currently residing in West Australia who did this, the feat is somewhat rare. That feat may, however, be impossible in the US.

An American PhD in professional psychology differs from its same-name American counterpart in its content and its length. Generally the first three to four years are taken up with coursework, the fourth or fifth with a full-time internship and the fifth or sixth with a dissertation. Total training in psychology is 6 to 7 years, 5 to 6 of which are academic and 1 of which is supervised professional experience. An Australian with a 2 year Professional Masters Degree plus 2 years experience has a similar level of training except for an additional research dissertation and more of an emphasis on practical supervised experience. An Australian with a 3 year Professional Doctorate Degree plus 1 year of supervised experience has a similar level of training with more of an emphasis on research.

Like the American counterpart, the total length of training in the specialist professional streams is generally a year longer than that required to complete a research PhD (at least in theory).  In America this makes a professional PhD the senior degree, at least in length.  In Australia this relationship is hidden by the practice of divorcing most or all of the internship from the degree.   The consequence, for Australia, is that, firstly, the status of professional psychology is lower than it should be and, secondly, the quality of training is compromised because professional psychology continues to be taught in tertiary institutions by psychologists whose skills and promotional prospects are primarily in the research area.  In Australia, the profession of psychology is unique in demanding that students organise and pay for the final few yeas of training themselves. It is also unique in expecting professional psychologists [but not research psychologists] to donate training services to these students.  Many people have very vested interests in keeping this state of affairs as it is, and not all of them are research PhD's:  psychiatrists do not want to see the rise of a strong opposition in behavioural medicine and governments do not want to be forced to broad band professional psychologists into a more expensive pay bracket.

Even among the accredited programmes, there is some variation in the quality and length of American professional PhDs.  They vary from as little as 4 years to as many as 7 years of full-time training in psychology. The longer ones all include an internship but the shorter ones often leave it to the graduate to arrange a "post-doctoral internship" at another institution. The West Australian Psychologists Registration Board has stated that an American professional PhD is generally the minimum requirement for registration as a practising professional psychologist in Australia – at any level.

And what about post-doctoral programmes?

American post-doctoral programmes are difficult to equate with Australian programmes. The New York based post-doctoral diplomate in neuropsychology is similar in course content and level to the professional Masters course in Neuropsychology at Melbourne University. Graduates of the American course could, however, be expected to have a broader clinical training than most of their Australian counterparts. On the other hand Australian graduates from combined professional Masters/PhD programmes, or professional Masters graduates who then complete a PhD are likely to have a much more extensive research background than the average American professional PhD. In American arithmetic, these kinds of degree couplings amount to a double PhD, which is an impossibility. In the States this kind of thing can only be achieved by enrolling in the last few years of a second PhD programme for what is known as "re-specialisation". No further degree is awarded.

And after all that talk of psychology, I suppose you have forgotten that Australians start their training in psychology with a better background in related science subjects. While many Americans do manage to catch up, especially at post-doctoral level, they also have a reputation for importing foreign-trained professionals. They will only do this, however, if the name of the degree does not threaten the prevailing cultural myth of American superiority in all things. This cultural attitude plays right into the hands of the ignorant Australian who believes that Australia is academically backward.  It also strongly disadvantages students from either culture who wish to study psychology on a reciprocal basis.

To conclude ..

So there we have it: an expose of the involuntary or intentional ignorance behind the Aussie Psycho-Academic Cringe. There is a very good case for arguing that Australian psychologists, even at mere Bachelor level, are actually quite well trained in comparison with our trans-Pacific neighbour.  While it might be expedient  for facilitating the migration of Americans to Australia the NOOSR formulae lack credibility when applied to professional psychology credentials.  Unfortunately Australian psychology qualifications will continue to be grossly under-valued by American universities and credential evaluation businesses while NOOSR continues to be the only Australian authority available. 

The situation could be remedied if the psychology departments of Australian universities net-published their criteria for assessing foreign qualifications for intake into undergraduate and graduate courses in the same manner as Berkeley and UCLA.

It could be remedied if all State Registration Boards could be persuaded to net-publish their criteria for registering professional psychologists together with the criteria used to assess the equivalence of foreign degrees.  It would also be valuable if these bodies could form reciprocal arrangements with American registration boards, such as the reciprocal arrangement between the NZ psychologist registration board and at least one of the Australian State Registration Boards (South Australia). 

It could be remedied if the Australian Psychological Society net-published the criteria for membership of those with Australian qualifications together with the criteria used to admit those with foreign based degrees.  It would be of great assistance if the APS came to some reciprocal arrangement with the American Psychological Association on these matters.  This would be in line with similar moves from bodies representing other Australian professions  (e.g. medicine, chiropractic, speech pathology) for whom an Australian Bachelor degree is the primary qualification in contrast with an American Masters or Doctorate for the members of  the sister body.

It would also help if the staff from the Victorian Ministry of Education were a little more educated about international systems of education compared with their own.

It could be assisted if all these bodies sought to educate both Australians and Americans about the similarities and differences in the education systems used to educate psychologist.

Happily, some of these matters have already been dealt with by some of the State Registration Boards.  This is encouraging.  However, there is still much that needs to be done.  If the politics of these organisations preclude them from quickly engaging in this kind of behaviour then other less hampered bodies must become involved.  If they do not, then the status and life-expectancy of Australian professional psychology is in jeopardy as the Internet shrinks the world. 

Comments and corrections of material in this article are welcome.

1. An Australian Bachelor Degree [3 year Bachelor] with a major in psychology is roughly equivalent to an American Masters degree in psychology in terms of years of psychology studied, but is academic rather than professional.

2. An Australian Post Graduate Diploma in Psychology [3 year Bachelor + 1  year p/g]  is equivalent to a 2 year American Masters Degree in that it is professionally orientated and contains a minor research project.

3. An Australian Honours Degree in Psychology [4 year Bachelor] has no counterpart in the American system but is roughly equivalent to the second year of a PhD in psychology except that a dissertation is required.  Combined with the mandatory two years of supervised experience it is roughly equivalent to an American D.Psych.

4.  The Australian PhD is equivalent to the American {Research} PhD in terms of years of psychology, but contains more research and less coursework.

5.  An Australian Coursework Masters plus required supervision is equivalent to an American professional PhD but with more experience.

6. An Australian Coursework Doctorate plus required supervision is equivalent to an American professional PhD but with more research.

7. There is no direct Australian equivalent of the American D.Psych. but it is roughly equivalent to an Australian Honours Degree in psychology plus the mandatory two years of supervised experience.

Country Education Paper [USA], National Office of Overseas Skills Recognition [NOOSR],   Australian Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs [DETYA]

International Acceptance of the Victorian Certificate of Education [VCE]
        http://www.bos.vic.edu.au/vce/internat/overseas.htm

Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
        http://www.rcsi.ie/medical_school/admissions/index.html

Third International Mathematics and Science Study {TIMSS} Report: 
        http://timss.bc.edu/TIMMS1/Highlights.html
              http://nces.ed.gov/timss.publist.html    

        http://nces.ed.gov/timss/twelfth/index.html [see #executive summary] 
              Highlights from TIMMS: Overview and Key Findings Across Grade Levels
              National Center for Educational Statistics:
              Office of Educational Research & Improvement, US Dept. of Edu.  [NCES 1999-081]

VCE [Year 12, Victoria, Australia] Psychology:
        http://www.mgc.vic.edu.au/curriculum/vce/psych.htm

Bob Jones University:
        http://www.bju.edu

Melbourne University Psychology: 
        http://www.psych.unimelb.edu.au

Radford University Psychology: 
        http://www.runet.edu/~psyc-web/graduate/index.html

Berkeley University Psychology: 
        http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/psychology/directory.htm
        http://www.grad.berkeley.edu/grad/admis/app00/require.htm
        http://www.grad.berkeley.edu/grad/admis/app00/international.htm        

UCLA Post-graduate Admissions:
        http://www.gdnet.ucla.edu/gasaa/admissions/criteria.htm
        http://www/gdnet.ucla.edu.gasaa/admissions/intlreqt.htm

Types of Registered Psychologists in Australia
       http://www.neurognostics.com.au/academicequivs/WARegPsychs.htm
       http://www.neurognostics.com.au/academicequivs/SARegPsychs.htm

Australian Psychologist Registration Boards on the Net
       South Australia:           http://www.regauth.com/sapb
       New South Wales:     http://www.psychreg.health.nsw.gov.au
       Queensland:                http://www.psychologyboard.qld.gov.au

American Psychologist Licensing Boards on the Net
      General Info & Links     http://www.asppb.org

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For a chart showing the cumulative years of psychology for specific American degree programmes see:

http://www.neurognostics.com.au/AcademicEquivs/DegreeStruc.htm