PsyD Programs vs. PhD Programs

Thinking about a doctorate in psychology and wondering which path leads there? Some clinical psychology programs hand out a Doctor of Psychology degree, the PsyD, rather than the older research doctorate, the Doctor of Philosophy, or PhD. The two routes overlap in a lot of ways, but they weight training differently, and that difference matters depending on what you want to do once you finish.

Take La Salle University as one example. It runs an APA-approved PsyD program in clinical psychology, built for students who have completed a bachelor's degree in psychology or a related field, as well as for people already holding a master's degree in a mental health discipline. The program is professional in orientation rather than purely academic.

La Salle's program follows what's called the practitioner-scholar model. Theory and practice are woven together across the entire course of study, so students are not asked to pick between the two. Along the way, the program requires a two-year practicum sequence and a full-year clinical internship.

There is also a Clinical Dissertation to complete, either qualitative or quantitative, that takes on a genuine original question of value to clinical practice. The curriculum leans toward methods that have shown real empirical support, and it folds questions of human diversity into coursework throughout. Students with specific career aims can concentrate in one of four areas: General Practice, Clinical-Child and Family Psychology, Clinical Health Psychology, or Sport-Performance Psychology.

Now the PhD. It is the older of the two doctorates and tends to be viewed as a research degree. Plenty of independent professional schools of psychology do award the PhD, though in those settings they often pair research training with applied or practice work. The PsyD, by contrast, keeps growing in popularity at professional and independent programs, somewhat the way the MD functions in medicine. PsyD programs put heavy emphasis on readying graduates for professional practice as practitioner-scholars, usually with a lighter research component.

So with all of that laid out, how do you decide which degree fits you? In the academic world, the PhD generally carries more weight than the PsyD. Step into clinical practice, though, and the two hold roughly equal standing and let you do roughly the same work. For the numbers: according to the American Psychological Association, about 75 percent of all doctoral degrees in psychology awarded today are PhDs.