Diversity in SLP: Is it improving?

[MillyFutureSLP]

Hey there!

I'm an African American male with cerebral palsy pursuing SLP. I attend the University of Pittsburgh, and like many of you, this field has such a personal effect on my life. This application season seems more daunting and stressful than prior years, for applicants are even more qualified and engaged in research, volunteerism, academics, NSSLHA, etc. Nonetheless, I've read and heard from various professors, clinicians, colleagues, and sites that diversity is key in expanding the profession and making it more comprehensive on all levels. Most SLPs tend to be Caucasian women and in general, 90-95% of SLPs in the U.S. are women, so how much more can this field become diverse? Also, what are some efforts we as aspiring speech pathologists can do to make the field more diverse in terms of gender, race, and ethnicity? Lastly, on a more personal note, I'm applying/applied to such schools like UNC, Vanderbilt, Temple, Maryland, Northeastern,Penn State, and Bloomsburg. How much do big name SLP programs take into account diverse applicants, and should this be a main priority or simply to admit the best qualified candidates?

[y1989]

I believe that diversity can definitely give you an edge. That being said, I think that graduate programs want you to be a competitive applicant too. In california at least, there's a huge need for bilingual SLPs as many of the SLPs entering the workforce are as you stated, caucasian females.

Keep your stats up, but I would say not to rely too much on your ethnic background nor your sex to gain admittance!

[Astrid Coleslaw]

Qualified applicants are rightfully the biggest criteria, but since there seems to be LOADS of qualified applicants and too few spots, I think cultural, linguistic and gender diversity is an important factor. Bilingualism, especially, as there is a functional need for that. I would definitely not hesitate to emphasize how your experience as X X or X contribute to your qualifications as an applicant as long as those connections are strong and well-explained. 

 

I think the main reason there are so many white, middle-to upper middle-class women in the field is that it doesn't pay all that much compared to how much schooling it takes. This tends to discourage out several demographics which would otherwise be attracted to the field. 

[MillyFutureSLP]

The median salary is around $70000, which is the same for audiologists, and they require more school than SLPs. I do not think that it is salary that determined it.

[Tuck]

I've read and heard from various professors, clinicians, colleagues, and sites that diversity is key in expanding the profession and making it more comprehensive on all levels. 

 

Also, what are some efforts we as aspiring speech pathologists can do to make the field more diverse in terms of gender, race, and ethnicity?

 

As one of the aforementioned Caucasian females, I bring nothing to the table personally in terms of increasing diversity in the profession, but I agree that it's important. I've participated on some diversity task forces and whatnot over the years, as I've worked in at four universities prior to changing tack and pursuing SLP as a career.

 

In healthcare, it's important for our patients that the health professions begin to resemeble American demographics to some degree. More minorities in healthcare has been shown to correspond to increased access to and satisfaction with healthcare among minority groups. It's an unpleasant truth that lack of diversity among clinicians leads to treatment disparities. For those interested, here is a meta-study by the Department of Health and Human Services on this topic: http://bhpr.hrsa.gov/healthworkforce/reports/diversityreviewevidence.pdf

 

A commitment to diversity has to come from the highest level of an institution to really be transformative, and the reasons why diversity is important have to be articulated throughout the institution. People have to be shown that diversity has a measureable public benefit. It takes skilled and committed leaders to get everyone on board. 

 

The University of Texas at Austin recently faced a challenge like this - the President had to articulate a defense of their undergrad admissions policy, which made it to the Supreme Court, knowing full well that he had to get many of the university's donors, regents, and other not-typically-progessive-type folks on board.

 

On the practical side of things, it has been shown universities have to hire more diverse faculty in order to attract more diverse students. Keep that in mind if you are ever in charge of faculty recruitment somewhere.  :-)  Additionally, programs that want to attract more diverse students have to recruit accordingly. Many schools have fairly involved minority recruitment strategies that involve hosting events targeting minorities, going to minority clubs to present recruitment materials, advertising in majority-minorty markets, creating minority student clubs among their current student group, hiring diverse recruiters, etc.  I suspect one of the reasons this hasn't happened in SLP is that most SLP masters programs hardly have to recruit at all! There has been a surge of undergraduate students and graduate school applicants in CSD recently. No department chair is going to allocate a substantial amount of money for any kind of recruitment initiative when there are hordes of applicants beating down their doors!  Maybe NSSLHA or other student groups could work with department heads to help with this kind of thing.

 

In one of my CSD classes, on the first day of class, the professor asked the male students in the class to raise their hands. She said she was so glad to have them in her class, and that she hopes they continue with their studies because the profession needs them and their clients need them. I would love to see this kind of thing happen more often.

 

On another note, I disagree with you about salary. I think it is a factor. The money in SLP isn't bad, but it isn't top-tier either. One can make more than what many SLPs make with just a Bachelors in computer sciences, engineering, and geology, business, etc. As far as graduate schooling goes, the bump in salary you see for getting a PharmD or an MBA, for example, is much better than what you get for a Master's in SLP. At schools I'm familiar with, diversity in the pharmacy programs blows social work, nursing, and CSD out of the water. At my current university, it's about 60-40 women to men, and only about 40% white. The SLP program, on the other hand, is almost all women, although it is more ethnically diverse than average for this field. The median salary for a pharmacist is $115K, and it only requires 4 additional years after completion of the pre-pharm credits.

 

Economically, women stand to benefit more from getting a master's degree, on average, which may have something to do with the gender issue in CSD. Or, it could just have more to do with the fact that healthcare (except physicians and administration) is female-dominated.

 

Further thoughts?

[lele]

To those who have been discussing salary: why do you think SLP's and audiologists are paid less than other fields that perform similar services and/or are in a related health care field? I am actually very surprised to hear that audiologists make no more than SLP's on average considering how much school they go through

[queenleblanc]

It was a fairly recent change that took audiology up to the doctoral level as the 'entry' degree - I think the historical salary levels have not risen to accompany the change in the amount of schooling.  A lot of people still view the clinical doctorate (AuD) as a lower tier degree.  

 

As far as SLP/ Aud compared to other medical fields such as PT or OT, I think the US bureau of labor statistics gives some good numbers to look at.  OT was only slightly higher on average than SLP.  PT was a bit higher than OT if I remember correctly.  You have to also take into account that the averages you see on that site are not necessarily the official estimates on pay -- there are SLP's that make much more than the average, although probably not as many at that level compared to the entry level SLP's due to the "shortage" that we always hear about in this field.  I'm personally grateful that ASHA keeps the programs from flooding the market with SLP's... higher supply, lower pay ... lower supply, higher pay ... or at least that's how it works in theory, right?! :-) 

[TheRealMSol]

The only diversity I bring to the table is that I'm a male pursuing my MA to become an SLP. Other than that, I'm a white Irish Catholic in the Northeast. But I have a bit of a different experience having gone to school in the city. While only 10% of the group I've gone through undergrad with was male (5-6 out of about 50-60), there is such a rich representation of ethnicities - Hispanic, African-American, Jewish, Middle Eastern, Asian...you name it. I've been taking Spanish courses because I know how important bilingualism is in this and many other areas, and it's only becoming more important and time goes by. 

 

I guess the sentiment I'm trying to get across is that it's great to see people from so many different walks of life and all different backgrounds pursuing the same goal. I feel lucky that I've gotten to know and work on projects with people who I wouldn't have come across during 12 years of Catholic school, or even my first degree in broadcasting (heavily white-male dominant). 

 

I think the best thing we can do as SLPs to promote diversity is just to be ourselves. Whether it's with regards to sex, skin color, religion, or ethnicity, you never know who will identify with you and say, "Hey, that person looks like me or seems to have a similar background. Maybe I can be an SLP too." That goes for the "stereotypical" white female SLP as well. We can all make a difference, but it should never be determined on our genetics. At the same time, it's those same genetics that may come in handy when establishing rapport and a relationship with our clients, so they're definitely not a detriment!

[Arcanelady27]

As a black woman, I was the only black that interviewed for a local school. I can not say for certain it is improving. I would need to see the numbers of those actually pursuing SLP.

Edited March 22, 2014 by Arcanelady27

[schnecke]

I am biracial (African American and German). At both of my interviews so far I was the only minority. I really hope for this field to become more diverse, but I think it will still take a while.

[autismadvocate]

I love diversity. I grew up going to magnet schools. If you're not familiar, where I'm from magnet schools are a type of school whose goal is to encourage racial desegregation (those of you from other countries are probably going to be horrified to hear those exist and there's still a need for them). For my school what that meant was that at least either the principal or assistant principal had to be black and a certain percentage of children at the school had to be black, too. Then I went to high school at a non-magnet school and it was really not diverse - only two black students were in our graduating class. (To our school's credit, it was a graduating class of sixty and there were a fair number of Asian and a handful of Latino students, so it's not quite as bad as it sounds, but still...) And then finally I went to a university. And WOW. It was amazing. It was diverse in every way, shape, and form. On my walk to class, I heard at least two foreign languages every day. I got to meet people from countries all over the world. And not only were there international students, there were plenty of domestic diverse students, too. Asian, Latino, Black, White, old, young, disabled, LGBTQ, Muslim, Buddhist, atheist, it was a beautiful melting pot of people. And I loved every minute of it.

 

As you can see, I've had a lot of experience with schools and diversity. And there were some common themes I noticed. First of all, when children were forced to be together in the magnet schools, ironically enough there was less mixing. I remember being scared of the black girls in elementary school. Not by virtue of the fact that they were black - one on one I was friends with several of them - but, and I was too young to notice if this was self-segregation or due to pressure, they grouped together and were pretty mean to anyone out-group (and if I was one on one playing with someone, they stopped playing with me as soon as someone else from their group came up...even if they actually wanted to play with me. The white kids probably did the same to the black kids, I don't know, I wasn't particularly part of their group either - I, unfortunately, was a ridiculously unpopular kid so I was happy with stragglers from either group that would accept me. My point, though, is that the whole 'put race first' attitude in constructing schools didn't work very well. Then, of course, my high school didn't take race into consideration at all. This led to the opposite problem, where we had pretty much no black students (few minorities of any sort, for that matter, unless you count girls who seriously outnumbered boys). But college was such a wonderfully diverse experience. And what I think they did right was weighing race as a factor...but not making it THE factor (which, on top of being incredibly unfair, would not solve the problem).

 

The other thing I noticed that separated my schools was honors programs. Consistently, honors programs were less diverse. My high school was an honors program, and my college dormitory was through honors as well (I had about 100 dormmates over the years and only a handful were black, a handful Latino, and a handful Asian...that's it, and as I mentioned, otherwise the school was INCREDIBLY diverse). Both had minimum requirements to enter, and both required applications. I don't know if it's just fewer diverse students who meet requirements or fewer who apply, but that anecdotally does seem to be a big weed-out factor, and that's a problem. I'm wondering if SLP has the same problem, probably with few students applying. My guess is the problem isn't something that needs to be fixed on the admission side of things, it's a recruitment and education problem. And that's the end that we should be working at to solve it.

 

Just my two cents based on my experiences. Interested to hear you guys' thoughts.

Edited March 22, 2014 by autismadvocate

[combustiblecake]

My undergrad SLP courses are full of caucasian middle-class ladies. They also all seem to belong to some sort of sorority too, which is something that doesn't have a pretty good rep. I'm the only latina in most of these courses and I have to admit it intimidates me not to see diversity. Most of my friends who come from many backgrounds are usually studying linguistics and stray away from SLP cross-listed courses because they say they're also intimidated by the the lack of diversity. It's also becoming really popular to minor in Spanish only for the sake of being competitive (at least in my school), which upsets me as a native speaker because it doesn't seem genuine interest in a different culture and language.

 

I really hope this field does become diverse, a lot of our clients will not be caucasian middle-class children and will have different needs. Gender also helps, because male SLPs can bring another perspective on how to interact with boys with disabilities. 

 

On the table I can say that my background is diverse - but I'm trying my very best to know as many cultures as well because this is a passion of mine as well. Maybe I can travel the world to get to know all sorts of cultures before even becoming an SLP in the US.

[Persis]

As a black woman, I was the only black that interviewed for a local school. I can not say for certain it is improving. I would need to see the numbers of those actually pursuing SLP.

I am also a black woman.  I will say that American is even better than Canada.  I was the only black female in my undergrad program, and yes, it is very intimidating. People here almost look at me like i am black and i can't be an SLP. SAD

[chitchat2016]

I'm a Caribbean American female and I too was the only Black person at the school where I interviewed ( and was recently accepted). On my interview day a Black male who worked in the building said I was the only Black candidate he'd seen come for in interview the whole week and wished me the best of luck with my interview haha.

Considering I, like many of us on here, am just about to start graudate school I can't really say if diversity in the field is improving. I know that it is severely lacking, but I look forward being a part of the growth.

My friends and family honestly never heard of the field before I became interested and there are less than 5 SLPs in the country we're from. And in fact I based my personal statement on my plan to use my degree to eventually open a center in our home country which I believe greatly set me apart from other qualified candidates. I also am taking this into consideration as I decide between my two top schools on where to attend - in terms of what the programs offer and the inherit value they place on racial and ethnic diversity.

Thanks for starting this thread

[ImpulsiveNixie]

I think that this is one of my favorite reasons for being in the SoCal regions. My undergrad classes were full of diversity. The schools here take encourage cultural/gender differences and shape their programs around that environment. Another thing I enjoy about the program here is there are quite a few eastern European students within the program. They provide a totally different perspective and it shows that the picture of cultural diversity can also become quite stereotyped because it didn't fit my assumptions. While I don't think they would just let you in strictly because you were ethnically diverse, I think that if you play that to your strength it will make you a strong candidate. 

 

I have lived in many different parts of the country and I have learned that some areas embrace it more than others. However, I have notice the field of speech pathology has come a long way. I can tell in the research articles and books that I have read. We had few professors in our programs illuminate that there have been changes but cautioned that there still needs to be more. One of the best things I have learned in the southwestern region is the difference between dialect and disorder. It is a common misconception that the research/clinical community trying to fix. There is wonderful research on the ineptitude of standardized tests used for diagnosing and embracing the many different dialects of American English (like African American English - AAE - and Spanish American English). 

 

If you are concerned with diversity. Look at the research and faculty. Look at whether or not they have established bilingual programs. Look at the region of the country. Look at the cities (metropolitan vs rural). All of these areas contribute to a programs cultural influences.