The Right to Work and Right to Education: A Reconceptualization of Employment-Based Field Placements

Overview: The focus of the workshop is on innovation in employment-based field placements. We will present one School's approach to embracing this new form of field education within their MSW program. This will include strategies for communication and additional measures to ensure rigor for employment-based students.Proposal text: Changes in the practice community directly impact field education. Increasing caseloads, smaller budgets, and higher demands on social workers make it more difficult for social workers to mentor field students (Hopkins et al., 2005). In addition, higher education costs continue to rise, and social workers' salaries lag behind similar professions (Carnevale et al., 2021) Alam, 2019). Further, social workers are rarely compensated for their fieldwork, which is becoming increasingly controversial (Harmon, 2017).
These factors all lead to a context where it may be too financially burdensome for students to pursue an MSW degree. This cost burden has a disproportionate impact on first-generation college students and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds (Fry, 2021). According to the Council on Social Work Education (2015), 70% of MSW degree earning students are white. It is conceivable that a social work degree is not financially feasible for many low-income individuals. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates that everyone should have the right to work (article 23) and that higher education be equally accessible to all based on merit (article 26) (UN General Assembly, 1948). Therefore, it is incumbent upon schools of social work to make changes that expand and diversify the pool of social work students. Employment-based field placements are one avenue toward this goal.
The focus of the workshop is on innovation in employment based field placements. We will present one School of Social Work’s approach to embracing this new form of employment-based field education within their MSW program, and ensuring quality learning and rigor within the experience. This will include strategies for communication, messaging, and additional measures included to ensure academic rigor for students who opt to use their work as field.
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Council on Social Work Education modified the standards for employment-based field placements. Under these new standards, students can receive field education hours from their employment if their job activities allowed them to develop competence in the nine social work competencies. Although CSWE has long permitted students to complete employment-based placement, prior to these changes, a student's field placement had to be entirely separate from their work responsibilities. This is a drastic paradigm shift for social work education—with significant implications for schools of social work and the profession.
This workshop will highlight how the new employment-based field guidelines can create greater opportunity for nontraditional and working students and promote basic human rights. The majority of students who pursue employment-based field placements are enrolled part-time. Nationally, part-time graduate students are older and more diverse (U.S. Department of Education, 2021). By embracing the new guidelines, schools of social work can expand and diversify the pool of students who can pursue an MSW degree.