We are coming to the close of a uniquely challenging semester for field education. No one has been untouched by the challenges wrought by the pandemic, whether we are students, field instructors, liaisons, coordinators, administrators, support staff, or others.
At the start of the semester, there were roughly 70 students without field placements and a shortage of agencies, leaving the field office scrambling to find or create new placements and provide learning opportunities for those students during this period. Many students with field placements have struggled to get adequate client contact, supervisor/instructor contact, and learning opportunities within their agencies. Students placed with Baltimore City Public Schools were not assigned a school system email address until the beginning of November, severely limiting their ability to participate in the fully remote school system. Others have been overworked or asked to perform tasks beyond their skill level to a point that was unethical.
The field office is aware of these problems and has been incredibly active this semester in reaching out to students and instructors. It is obviously committed to providing the best possible field experiences. However, due to the shortage of placements, many students with significant concerns have chosen to stay silent or have only revealed only a portion of their concerns because they fear being removed from the current placement without any available alternative and subsequently being forced to delay field and extend their education by a year.
While some distinctive problems have emerged, many of the issues with field are not new and have simply been exacerbated by the current circumstances. There has always been a continuum of placement experiences from completely inadequate—where students have nothing to do—to completely unethical and exploitative—where students are used as free labor and agencies even bill client hours for student cases.
Let me be clear: These are the extremes, and the majority of agencies fall somewhere in between. With hundreds of different agencies available for placements, more than 100 students assigned to each coordinator, and many different factors and perspectives to consider, there are always challenges to identifying where agencies fall on that continuum and the proper response.
The field office has an earnest commitment to meeting students’ needs, but we are all working within an unbalanced system in which we need agencies more than agencies need us.
The majority of the field education program is dependent on volunteer field instructors, who are not compensated by our school for their instruction. Depending on agency policies, field instructors may be compensated within their agency by counting field instruction time toward regular work hours. But because many agencies are currently under stress, instructors are likely taking extra time for supervision and instruction. There are incentives for agencies and field instructors to participate, like the increased capacity that students provide, free CEUs provided by the field office, and discounted CEUs offered by the Office of Continuing Professional Education. Field administration is also considering options for field instructor compensation. However, it is limited by budgeting and the potential need to increase tuition.
As we are a public institution, we are beholden to state appropriations for higher education, but on further analysis, this does not seem to be the real problem. According to the State Higher Education Finance 2019 Report, while state appropriations per student have decreased 16% since the high in 2001, appropriations per student have actually increased 13% since 1980 (adjusted for inflation), and total education revenue per student in Maryland has increased 62% since 1980. The proportion of revenue coming from tuition has almost doubled since 1980, meaning students accounted for most of the overall increase.
While students have been taking on an increasing share of the burden of financing this institution, has that additional money been used to provide better-quality education, hire additional staff to run effective programs, or adequately compensate those providing our education? Our tuition dollars fund a significant portion of this institution’s operations, and we have a say in how those dollars are spent.
Despite the good intentions of the field office and the complications involved, the current state of field education is not acceptable when students are taking on massive amounts of debt to pay for a program in which field is supposed to be the “signature pedagogy.” The field office should take the following actions immediately to supplement the field experience this year and more effectively work toward long-term solutions:
Have the field office guarantee that students will not be forced to delay field if removed from an agency at no fault of their own. This is the only way to ensure transparency and maintain a roster of functional, high-quality field placements.
Distribute an anonymous survey for students and field instructors to more accurately assess the scope of the problems. The field office has been in conversation with the SGA about recruiting students to create the survey. Those students would potentially be able to count that project toward field time. Please contact the SGA at sga@ssw.umaryland.edu to participate.
Plan additional supplemental learning opportunities, like those offered at the beginning of the semester, and make them available to all students in field. Students lacking adequate learning opportunities could be involved in planning these activities, as has been proposed for the survey, which would increase the capacity of the field office and provide those students with macro experiences.
We as students must speak up if we want to improve our experience; ours are not the only needs under consideration. Changes will not happen without demand. If any students are in need of peer support, please reach out to abritton@umaryland.edu.
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