A Summary of the Arguments Against Social Work Licensure

For a long time now, I've wanted to write a journal article critically engaging with the existing state of social work licensure laws and what I perceive to be their negative effects on social work practitioners and consumers.  Before I start wading into the literature (this will be my next theoretical article after the two I'm working on now), I wanted to summarize what I believe to be the main arguments against the status quo.  I'm hoping to get it out soon to capitalize on the White House's report on occupational licensure.

1) Prices

Licensure laws, by restricting access to market for producers, serve to increase prices for social work services.  This benefit is not distributed evenly across social workers.  Older, more established social workers are best protected by this law, as they have been grandfathered into or already earned their license and have accrued a reputation in their practice area.  Newer social work licensees, on the other hand, will be less able to undercut their prices and enter into a market.  Additionally, by setting an artificially high price floor for the services of clinical social workers, consumers (and insurers) are less able to negotiate lower rates or force practitioners to compete on price.  This is particularly problematic for consumers who use consumer-directed or self-directed social welfare programs to pay for social work services.

Questions:
- What does the literature say on health professional licensing and prices for services?
- What empirical and theoretical foundations can I rely on?

2) Lack of evidence

I haven't done a thorough and proper literature search, but I'm willing to bet that the empirical evidence for social work licensure is slim to non-existant.  The main arguments for licensure involve client protection, but are their studies that show that stricter licensure requirements are associated with fewer malpractice cases?  I'm willing to bet there are not.  I may even have to request this data.

Questions:
- Has anyone ever studied this before?
- What does data from other health professions say about licensure?
- What was the state of social work licensure before the ASWB model law?
- Would it be worth requesting this data, performing a regression, and publishing it?

3) Access to social work profession

The cost of getting a social work license is prohibitively high for individuals of low income.  In order to start practicing independently, social workers must earn a masters degree, pass one or more licensing exams, and engage in supervised practice for 1-3 years (depending on the state).  Masters degrees at state schools are at least in the tens of thousands of dollars.  It's not like there are many endowed social work departments to offer scholarships and fellowships.  The licensing process itself costs a few hundred dollars to process your paperwork.  And clinical supervision is often an additional weekly cost over the course of 1-3 years (we've probably paid 7-8 thousand dollars).  Finally, in order to maintain your license, you need to be able to pay for continuing education units throughout the year.

Questions:
- How much does social work licensure cost in each state?
- How much does an MSW cost, on average?
- How do these vary by state?
- How much does clinical supervision cost in each state?
- How much do CEUs cost on average?  How do most social workers get their CEUs?

4) It fucks over the young

Social work licensure is a game that is dominated by existing practitioners.  Given that social work licensure used to be far more laissez-faire and college tuition costs have risen exponentially, older social workers are less likely to have faced such steep costs when they became practitioners.  Newer practitioners face steep costs that limit their ability to have enough capital to start their own businesses or form their own cooperatives.  Instead, many recent graduates will work as part of large organizations of social workers and counselors under the supervision of a few more experienced practitioners.  Older practitioners are also the individuals providing supervised practice and leading CEU courses and trainings for a considerable cost.  Newer practitioners are forced to pay these individuals in order to credential themselves.  Existing laws do not protect potential social workers, they protect existing social workers.

Questions:
- What were social work laws like prior to the 2000s?
- More of the cost stuff
- What is some theoretical literature that supports the idea that licensure laws impact newer competitors?

Mises and Objectivity (again)

Sorry, apparently, this blog is now just about epistemology?

Anyway, I'm continuing to read Human Action.  Mises spends a lot of time trashing the German historical school, which isn't particularly relevant to the arguments of today since the historicists don't have a lot of contemporary antecedents.  I absolutely loved his evisceration of homo economicus and the assumptions of the mainstream economic interpretation of classical economics.  Nothing I hadn't heard, but well put.

My sticking point continues to be with Mises' episetmological framework.  I appreciate that Human Action proceeds as it should--by starting from a philosophy of science framework and working downward to social theory.  But Mises' arguments for the "objectivity" of praxeology are still either unconvincing or too confusing for me to understand.  The comparison made in the study guide was that the Pythagorean theorem doesn't not need to be proven by measuring X number of triangles and concluding a posteriori that Pythagoras was correct.  Similarly, praxeological statements about human action and economic laws are not subject to falsification a posteriori.  They, like mathematical laws, derive their objective and universal truth from deductive logic (which Mises discusses as imperfect though good enough when subject to critical scrutiny) leading from humans act all the way to the laws of economics.

My question though is that how are economic laws equivalent to mathematical laws?  How does a relationship between abstract quantities in math, a pure science, actually relate to economic laws which are necessarily bound to human experience.  I'm not saying that a priori ideas cannot exist, but that the idea that these are universal for all individuals may not be true.  Triangles do not act.  Humans act.  The necessarily subjective character of that action (which is the precis of Mises' school of economic thought) seems like it should make those two branches of scientific inquiry quite dissimilar.  Furthermore, while a mathematician may be influenced by existing categorizations and understandings of how triangles behave, the degree to which individuals are influenced culturally about economic matters is in my estimation much greater.  I don't receive much information in my development on how to calculate the area of triangles.  Hell, I receive more information daily about economic matters than I have probably about triangles.  I can get the ideal of wanting economic laws to be as true as mathemetical laws, but it seems damn near impossible since our perception of economic logic and reason is culturally determined.  There would have to be too many damn asterisks after your knowledge claims.

It brings me back to something Mary Katherine once told me: "But it's still rat choice" [meaning rational choice].  I was trying to explain Austrian subjectivity theory to her, but it just all came out as rational choice.  Every time I read Mises I feel the same way.  He goes through a great critique of rational choice's idiotic assumptions about human nature, but then seeks to create the same universal, timeless, context-less laws that rational choice desires.  Weird.