Nskeptic made a good point in their reply though, that honorary/work experience/work for free posts are a symptom of the underlying disease. The important question here then is this – what is the underlying disease?

If we accept that salaries are roughly based on supply and demand for the skills and expertise required, then an increasing number of honorary posts suggests that there is either a) an oversupply of psychology graduates or b) an undersupply of assistant psychology posts (and/or possibly trainee clinical psychology places) or c) a bit of both.

In these times of political and economic austerity, as much as we might like the government to spend more on additional assistant psychologist posts (and trainee places) this is probably quite unlikely to happen.

This leads us to consider the other side of the equation, possible overproduction of psychology graduates. With undergraduate tuition fees now as much as £9000 per year, a psychology graduate will likely have in excess of £30,000 in debt (once living costs and other expenses are taken into account).

My worry is that if we continue to produce psychology graduates in ever increasing numbers, at much greater expense/debt to the graduate, into a job market with not enough posts and in which they are increasingly expected to take unpaid work experience, then the value of a psychology degree will become increasingly less, due to diminishing expected returns on an increasingly expensive investment.

At the moment, young undergraduates are still confident that their degree will give them an excellent return on their investment, but what if they begin to lose this confidence over the next few years or so? A loss of confidence in the value of a psychology degree would be disastrous for our profession, particularly in higher education.

I’m not sure what the solution is however. Perhaps other readers could offer their opinions here?

Also popular here are “working interviews” where “applicants” work free, sometimes for weeks.

I totally agree with the majority of your post, and would add that I’ve encountered people working for free in “honorary” assistant psychologist posts. Whilst it is invaluable experience, it does mean that only those who are able to afford to take what are in effect unpaid internships are able to gain experience in these jobs. This may well prevent people from less privileged backgrounds from getting into clinical psychology.

One point about the masters in applications of clinical psychology is worth making though. My university (Newman University College) offers a course in applications of clinical psychology, with modules in things like neuropsychological assessment, advanced statistics, ethics & professional issues etc and these modules can be taken to PG Cert (3 modules), Diploma (6 modules) or Masters (6 modules plus masters dissertation). However, most people do not actually do the whole course, as many of them manage to get into clinical training at some point during the course, so don’t complete the full masters.

Its hard to argue that the course is *causing* them to get into clinical training (as many of the masters students already have assistant psychologist jobs) so it could be that keen assistant psychologists are taking these courses as part time distance learners to try and boost their chances. Full disclosure – I’ve got the PG Cert from Newman, which would have cost me £1200 (£400 per module) although it was free for me as I was doing my PhD there.

One good thing is that clinical applications from men are now encouraged, as we are under-represented in the profession. Wish me luck!