Understanding the 2030 Criteria for Evaluation of Academic Credentials

CAP has been working on updates to the Criteria for some time now, as they are an ever-evolving set of requirements that must remain current. An important catalyst for change is the increasing number of applicants from non-traditional programs, many of which are not designed to train psychologists. Likewise, environmental pressure comes from the burgeoning and diverse field of professional counselling, increasing the need for clear distinctions between professions. There is also interesting movement in the US toward standardizing master’s-level training for psychologists through accreditation, just as there are new opportunities in Canada for regulators (like the Yukon and Ontario) to work on refining master’s-level regulation.

The most quantifiable changes are the addition of more required coursework in psychological assessment and intervention, along with explicit requirements for practicums in the same. (Specifically: 9 course credits each for both Assessment and Intervention areas, and a total of 400 practicum hours, including 100 direct in intervention and 25 direct in assessment.)

Otherwise, the biggest changes are the clarifications throughout to require and meaningfully distinguish education meant to train psychologists from other types of similar but non-equivalent education. Now, all graduate courses, and a person’s graduate degree, must explicitly intend to train psychologists. This means that the program must state clearly that they train psychologists or provide training that leads to registration as a psychologist. Relevant to that, CAP took this opportunity to clarify many things in the Criteria, in order to strengthen the criteria themselves and to elevate the profession.

On January 1, 2030, and after, all new academic credentials applications will be evaluated using the 2030 Criteria and all applications for doctoral title use will be evaluated using the Doctoral Criteria. Both new criteria documents will be used regardless of an applicant’s program or course completion date, meaning the new criteria will apply equally to all applicants who submit complete applications on or after January 1, 2030. 

CAP has given significant lead time for these changes, meaning that from the time they were approved by Council (in January 2026), there is almost four years until both new criteria documents come into effect. Ideally, all applicants who plan to apply for a credentials evaluation or for doctoral title use on or after January 1, 2030, can be fairly informed of what will and will not be accepted at that time. The main principle at play in giving significant notice is that applicants who intend to seek registration as psychologists can knowingly choose a program that fulfills our Criteria.

Please note that when we refer to applicants, we mean applicants looking to have their academic credentials evaluated, not applicants for provisional registration. That latter application comes after the academic credentials evaluation, and is not directly involved in these criteria changes or deadlines.

An interesting thing about working in Credentials is that every day our Criteria are tested. CAP processes (many) hundreds of applications each year and while some of these straightforwardly fulfill our Criteria, many force us to look very closely at our Criteria, criterion by criterion, to ensure clear interpretation and implementation. Here are some examples of how things can be tested:

• What is reasonably a “psychology course” that should be given credit? For example, is a course from an addictions counselling undergraduate program a course in psychology?
• What should count as a course in psychological assessment or psychological intervention or biological bases of behaviour?
• What constitutes a program or course “intended for the purpose of training people in the profession of psychology”? And how can you best tell the intentions of a program?
• Who should count, reasonably, as an instructor with the requisite knowledge and experience to teach future psychologists? Is any graduate degree in psychology good enough? Should psychological associates meet our instructor licensure requirements? What if a course is taught by two people, and only one of them fulfills our requirements?
• How should we determine that a course is worth 3 semester credits, considering our imperative that courses include 36 instructional hours? Consider how variable training can be in different jurisdictions and countries, and under different delivery models (e.g., online or asynchronous)!
• If a registrant completes a doctoral degree entirely in research without any coursework or internship, or a doctoral degree with only coursework but no practical components or research, should that count just the same toward use of the title “Doctor” in connection with the practice of psychology? What best protects the public?

All in all, in addition to benchmarking and conventions, and to what we might reasonably expect considering scientific findings on expertise and training, CAP has fulsome and extensive experience evaluating credentials applications. This experience means that we see hundreds of examples of training programs and application packages that train us to draw ever-clearer boundaries around what should and should not fulfill the intention and heart of our Criteria. 

This is not a simple question, and it represents a debate that has been ongoing for decades. For CAP, a significant foundation of professional psychology (the profession of clinical/counselling/school psychologists) is psychological science. This is to say that the work of a psychologist should be based upon the discipline of psychology in order to offer the best chance of robust assessment and treatment. Science is, after all, a system for coming to the least biased answers possible. Although it is not always possible to use science perfectly across all decisions a psychologist makes every day, psychologists endeavour to provide unbiased services to clients to maximize the chances of truly helping them. Part of the foundation of psychological science is robust assessment. In order to reasonably treat a client, for example, psychologists must be as accurate as possible in their clinical judgements (i.e., assessments) of those same clients. Robust assessment and diagnosis are cornerstones of science-informed practice where a coherent system with appropriate checks and balances allows a psychologist to arrive at a determination that is more likely to be accurate. 

Although there may be more that distinguishes psychologists from counsellors or other overlapping mental health professions, CAP places psychological science and psychological science-based assessment and intervention at the forefront.

For me, the Criteria has always been a very significant regulatory document because it is the first eligibility check for who can and cannot become a psychologist. Thus, the Criteria represents important boundaries around our profession and deeply informs our professional identity. So, I wish for registrants and others to see the Criteria as very important to the foundation and composition of our profession. 

Regarding credentials evaluations, something that seems to be commonly misunderstood is CAP’s public protection mandate. CAP must protect the public through eligibility checks by ensuring that applicants embody reasonable amounts of competence in the areas necessary for safe and competent practice with the public. This is our first priority in our work in general, and in our credentials evaluations specifically. The other easily misunderstood part of our credentialing work is how complex these reviews are and how much time they take if done diligently. Our team works tirelessly on these evaluations, all while keeping our public protection mandate in focus and giving full attention to the fairness required of us in these procedures. Each application takes many hours, and we receive hundreds a year! 

Historically, there has been confusion about what it means to have completed training explicitly for the profession of psychology. This means that we often receive coursework from applicants in related but distinct fields such as social work and counselling. We hope that the new Criteria helps to clarify this further, but I could still see it tripping some people up. Our professional landscape is complex and contends with a lot of overlap with other professions, making our evaluations and Criteria naturally complex.

This is an interesting and important question. I’ve never been able to separate assessment from treatment or from a psychologist’s everyday work. First, I think it’s fair to say that assessment is really a process of inquiry. Inquiring into a person’s nature, the nature of a problem and solution, the meaning of an event, behaviour, thought, or feeling and what to do about it, especially if it’s distressing or problematic, and so on. This means that all throughout a psychologist’s work they are making judgments and decisions based on some level of inquiry or assessment. Clients come with their own assessments of who they are, what’s going on, and what might help, and psychologists walk alongside clients to further hone those assessments. Thus, assessment is inextricable from treatment. The question should be less about whether or not a psychologist is assessing and more about how well prepared a psychologist is to produce helpful and minimally biased science-informed assessments. At base, humans are always assessing themselves and their environments (e.g., Why do I feel so bad? What can I do about it?) and psychological science has done so much to make those assessments more helpful and more accurate. 

Of course, I can understand a clinician contending that learning formal assessment is different than the assessments psychologists do every day, but the skill set is deeply overlapping. Formal assessment more formally teaches a clinician the ingredients of sound (and unsound assessment), and ought to teach clinicians about the various biases that interrupt good assessment. If we take such skills for granted, they are unlikely to be explicitly or meaningfully learned. If we carve out an intentional requirement for them, we can be more assured that clients are seeing psychologists who are less biased and more competent in their assessments, and thus necessarily more competent in their treatment as well.

Another important component here is pragmatic. The general public expects psychologists to be able to assess and diagnose, and the public has a need for these professional services as well. Moreover, the professional standard across Canada and more globally is that psychologists are competent in assessment and diagnosis. This is because, in the end, formal assessment skills distinguish psychologists from other allied professionals. Thus, Alberta’s Criteria ought to reflect these standards and place our psychologists alongside what is expected locally and globally.

I can appreciate that this is on the minds of many psychologists. It is also on the minds of many training programs in need of quality supervision for their students, especially in the area of psychological assessment. In the interest of being united as a profession and advancing quality care for clients for generations to come, these changes mean that already-registered psychologists might want to upgrade their training to ensure competence in assessment. It is our understanding that some CAP-approved programs may eventually offer training course packages for already registered psychologists that cover the 2030 Criteria assessment course requirements. This strikes us as a mutually beneficial offering, where psychologists can embrace an aligned professional identity, work toward more fully meeting client needs, and be better able to serve and train future generations. Supervision remains a keystone activity for passing on professional identity and expertise. We hope that psychologists interested in sharing their assessment expertise with psychologists-in-training will seek out opportunities to supervise for CAP-approved programs as they move into this new phase.

(And, no, we are not requiring current registrants to upgrade.)

Like other requirements in our Criteria, applicants can take university courses after completing their graduate degree to fulfill deficiencies in their application. It seems likely that some courses will be more difficult to find than others, especially ensuring that they meet all the criteria. Thus, the safest option is for applicants to attend CAP-approved programs that can guarantee graduate-level courses that align with our Criteria. Alternatively, potential applicants should seek out programs that meet CAP’s academic criteria.

CAP-approved programs represent model training for future psychologists and as such are key players in the professional landscape and in the ability for our profession to remain strong and coherent. CAP looks forward to continued relationships with CAP-approved programs. CAP is hopeful that nearly all of the current CAP-approved programs will continue to be approved under the 2030 Criteria. However, some of these changes are substantial and it is understandable that not all programs may remain CAP-approved. At this point, the re-approval process is underway, and further details will be shared when they are ready. 

We wanted to better represent specialized expertise in our field specifically. Under our current Doctoral Criteria, the main boundary around title use is that a registrant’s doctoral degree title has the word “psychology” in it. Otherwise, the member can only use their doctoral title with specification. Specification means having to specify the nature of one’s degree, as opposed to being able to list it without specification. In other words: the difference between putting PhD after my name and implying that this credential is related to my work or professional expertise, or putting Ph.D. after my name but specifying the area, like Ph.D. (Social Psychology). Moreover, the new Doctoral Criteria does much more to stipulate the ingredients of robust doctoral training in professional psychology so that the doctoral credential is meaningful and consistent in the eyes of the public.