Training Reforms in Psychology: What We are Missing, and the Direction You Weren't Expecting

Marianna Jaross

The Psychology Board of Australia has proposed a model that would take training to become a psychologist from six to five years in order to address workforce shortages: This means culling the postgraduate degree requirements of the profession, and condensing the degree into a bachelor’s degree leading to general registration. There has been an air of discontent with individuals and groups advocating against the change.

Perhaps this is more feedback than being "pockets of acute noise" from the industry. Psychologists are concerned about the integrity of the profession, the impacts of reducing our training, and whether this will solve the problem it has aimed to. Pushing psychologists into the workforce sooner by compressing training into a single degree is layered.

Personally, I am a registered psychologist: I completed a Bachelor of Arts (Psychology), Postgraduate Diploma of Psychology, Master of Counselling and Psychotherapy, and Master of Psychology (Professional). I also intentionally took a break from registration for several months in the last year, and am now keen to advocate for the direction of where I think healthcare is going moving forward. I will outline some of my lived experience reflections of my training, the major concerns of the reform, what we are missing from the big picture, and proposed solutions.

My lived experience of training to become a psychologist was we started client work late in our degree, the fifth year. Admittedly, my undergraduate degree held a decent chunk of research and statistics, which I also noticed ended up being huge deterrents for people to continue pursuing the road to become a psychologist. I believe this is a bit of a gate-keep of academia and marks assuming that this will translate to a clinical skillset; and I wonder how many potential psychologists we ‘lost’ at this point of training. There are, of course, arguments for the safe-guarding of psychology at different points of our training by experienced clinicians rather than relying on an admissions process to determine someone’s suitability as a psychologist (which would somewhat be the case should we rely on a five-year singular degree process). Those who do not complete their training to become registered psychologists are often pulled into other directions that we need: They may become counsellors, support workers, psychotherapists, youth workers, creative arts therapists, work in policy, corrections, and psychotherapy (and more!). They work in a variety of settings that better our community, and these professions are important to the gestalt of our workforce. From my perspective specifically, I have worked for not-for-profit services that are not typically housed with psychologists such as gambling-harm, family violence, and even certain areas of oncology. There are several elements worth considering: Is it appropriate to remove the hurdles at each stage of becoming a psychologist? Are we considering the current exit points of training; which feed into other areas of the system? And how are we going to consider our broader workforce? More on the latter later.

Importantly, rapidly increasing the workforce of psychologists results in a bottleneck. We don’t have enough supervisors for our trainee psychologists, and this change is training does not change or address this. Psychologists (and other mental health professions) understand the necessity and value of good supervision, how this can change the quality of our practice, provide another indirect way to support our clients, support clinician longevity; as well as being an integral part of our learning journey. In his article written in June 2026, Matthew Blake highlighted that “what actually caps the psychologists Australia produces is not the length of the degree, but the shortage of supervised placements and the supervisors to run them...” He posits that embedding practical training across larger cohorts means the increase in demand for placements (and supervisors) where there is none to spare. His solution involves supervision incentives, and increasing educator capacity; without lowering the standard of training from postgraduate to undergraduate. (For his full article, click here).

Rachel Phillips, Chair of the Psychology Board of Australia has highlighted stakeholder engagement revealing psychologist shortages occur largely in smaller jurisdictions and regional settings. Therefore, the question arises as to whether a reduction in training would actually solve the problem of a maldistributed psychology workforce. In her article “Why more Psychologist Won’t Fix Rural Workforce Shortages: Lessons from Moving 2,000 Kilometres for Love,” Nadene van der Linden (Clinical Psychologist and Supervisor) posits that perhaps Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS, Better Access) doesn’t work equally well in every community; talking to broader systemic issues outside of training alone. Additionally, she highlights that workforce shortages are largely a recruitment and retention problem: “… producing more psychologists and improving access to psychologists are not necessarily the same thing. Producing more psychologists may help, but it doesn't address the bigger question: Why do psychologists struggle to move to, and stay in, these communities?” (For her full article, click here).

This is a question I asked Cesar Aldea, Managing Director of Aldea Consulting, Mission Ready Recruitment, and DFV Medical Solutions: “The MBS pays too little, and you don’t have to leave metro Melbourne to get a good job. Clinicians also have a lot of access to remote work, and although that is making patients get access to practitioners that reside in metro areas, the adoption to telehealth in rural and remote communities hasn’t been that great.” From an anecdotal perspective, Cesar highlighted that people in regional and remote communities are more inclined to want to see their therapists in person, whereas metro patients are more used to telehealth. As a potential solution, Cesar expressed the need for regional and rural areas to invest in educating the community to enable greater adoption and openness towards receiving mental health support. From my perspective, the combination of the above creates a perfect storm of clinicians who are hesitant and not incentivised to work in regional and remote areas, clients who may be less likely to engage in telehealth services and not have access to the face-to-face clinicians they need, and the MBS that does not acknowledge regional and remote communities by reducing the gap fee.

So, a few things have been addressed: The context of training, the supervision bottleneck, and that recruitment and retention efforts need to be directed towards regional and remote areas for the psychologist shortage to be properly addressed. My addition is that if we are going to make big picture changes, we also need to consider how we are going to work together utilising our existing workforce in addition to our psychologists. I will address this as below with the shift in AQF (Australian Qualification Framework) levels resulting from this potential change.

A change in training poses an interesting situation in context of our broader workforce. If we move training from AQF level 9 to level 8 we lose the international standard of a postgraduate master’s degree to achieve general registration, thereby impacting equivalency and mobility. I can hear the potential argument that the training should be about meeting competencies rather than time spent on seats; but the reality is that we need to balance this with meeting professional standards, supervised practice, and enough time to explore and understand the clinical complexity and depth of what we are asking our clinicians to hold throughout their career. I would like to hear more about how this is going to occur, as churning out psychologists without care is not a solution; and will cause more challenges down the track. I suspect that the change in training would also mean being paid less, and this would impact earning capacity; notably, in a female-dominated profession.

I understand that we are looking at the reforms specific to psychologists, but if we are looking at the broader context, should we not be adding our broader workforce to the conversation? There are already qualified and registered professionals within the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA), the Australian Counselling Association (ACA), and ANZACATA (The Australian, New Zealand, and Asian Creative Arts Therapies Association) who are doing highly complex work; some of whom, if we continue down this particular reform path, are going to be more highly qualified than the generally registered psychologists we are proposing for our future workforce. I believe acknowledging existing talent and work that is already happening under these boards, and collaborating regarding our existing workforce is needed to support the future of Australian healthcare. It is not only psychologists who are providing mental health support and care; and if we worked together, I believe we could better look into the training pathways, competencies, and gaps in our training to map out solutions and training changes. This means considering the breadth of the training representative of the services that our clients may access in the community; and making use of this once in a generation reform to deeply investigate our broader system, collaborate, and make meaningful change.

Personally, completing a Master of Counselling and Psychotherapy deeply influenced my perspective; and throughout my career I’ve worked alongside counsellors, psychotherapists, creative arts therapists, and social workers, many of whom are doing highly complex work across a range of settings outside of the title of ‘psychologist.’ No, I am not positing that we all have exactly the same perspective, training, or approach; I am highlighting that I think these professions are underutilised and need to be considered in the mapping of our future workforce, particularly when some of whom will have higher qualifications than the standard to become a generally registered psychologist. If we continue down this road, we will be expecting psychologists to hold and support the most complex clients without the highest level of training while sidelining an existing workforce.

I have been advocating for the collaboration across boards and professions for most of my working life; largely because I have worked in community health for a decent proportion of my career and have seen these professions in action, have trained across these arenas, and have seen the benefits of multidisciplinary care, and where the commonalities and gaps in our training might be. I am also aware that these professions strongly hold perspectives we are deeply needing more of in psychology: The impact of trauma, the need for humanistic care, the impact of systems, looking at the person as a ‘whole,’ and ways of making sense of our experiences outside of talk therapy. I think now is a ripe time to initiate more conversations about the nuances of these different professions, and how we could manage change from an education and systemic level to meet the needs of our community. Completing this reform without further considering PACFA, the ACA, and ANZACATA; and the current and future value of these professions feels short-sighted of the currently trained professionals in our midst. Why haven’t we involved other boards in the conversation about training, workforce allocation, and how we can work together? I am aware that perhaps suggesting collaboration between boards is radical; but we shouldn’t be proposing change to mental health support and service delivery in silos, the way people seeking services don't either.

From my perspective, the current reform reveals several needs: We need thoughtful consideration of our training pathways with a mind towards regional and rural areas; and we need to be mindful of rushing into a reform without considering the breadth of our current workforce. I fear that if we rush into a reform, we risk pushing psychologists into settings without the training that they need, without the supervisors to support them; while also undervaluing an existing workforce and seeing how we could work together to create meaningful change, referral allocation, and broader systemic change to address the needs of the Australian community.

Here is what I would do to address the above:

1.)   I will restate Matthew Blake’s direct quote from his article: “Decline to adopt the five-year undergraduate degree as the sole pathway to registration in its current form, and keep a postgraduate stage with a rigorous, clinician-led assessment of suitability, reached by a more efficient route such as a three-year undergraduate degree followed by a two-year professional Masters.”

2.)   Create additional training incentives for supervisors across the sector now, as we already have a supervisor shortage. Without enough supervisors, the psychologist workforce can’t grow safely.

3.)   Focus efforts to the recruitment, retention, and incentives for psychologists to start and continue their careers in regional and remote communities. It is not enough to recruit to these positions; the aim has to be to retain psychologists in these communities.

4.)   Create a working group of professions across the sector including leaders from ANZACATA, PACFA, the ACA, and AHPRA: Yes, we are coming from different perspectives to support clients in the community; but we are all a part of the Australian healing ecosystem. If we are continuing to operate in silos, we are not making use of our unique skillsets and underutilising our existing workforce. Never has there been a riper time to bring professions together to work out what is going to be viable, ethical, and safe for the Australian community and best utilise our existing workforce as we shape the future of it.

5.)   Finally, I will introduce new information in my conclusion and summary point: We are also in the midst of the Creative Health Alliance; a partnership with SANE Australia, RMIT, and the Create Centre at the University of Sydney to deliver its Creative Health Alliance Australia project; including a national Creative Health Quality Framework. There is movement happening in the arena of community engagement, the arts as health infrastructure, and professionals coming together. I think we need to be thinking about normalising community healing spaces and how we are going to implement these in the future (which is potentially another article); as well as take inspiration from the possibility of meaningful collaboration to better the future of our healing services, and community health.  

© Marianna Jaross 2026

References

Blake, M. (2026, June 4). 20 reasons the psychology training reform should worry you. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20-reasons-psychology-training-reform-should-worry-you-matthew-blake-swa0c/

van der Linden, N. (2025, October 31). Why more psychologists won't fix rural workforce shortages: Lessons from moving 2,000 kilometres for love. https://www.nadenevanderlinden.com/blog/why-more-psychologists-wont-necessarily-fix-rural-workforce-shortages