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Article Excerpt
Social work has long been concerned with issues of diversity. According to the NASW Code of Ethics (2000),"Social workers should obtain education about and seek to understand the nature of social diversity and oppression with respect to race, ethnicity, national origin, color, sex, sexual orientation, age, marital status, political belief, religion, and mental or physical disability" (p. 9). If social workers' concerns with issues of opportunity and representation extend to virtually all practice, program, and policy arenas, it is reasonable to assume that social workers are also interested in the changing demographics of their profession. In this article, we examine the age, gender, and race and ethnicity of social workers in the context of the growth in the profession. Data on faculty in schools of social work are also examined because faculty members have influential roles as educators and developers of social work knowledge.
Growth and demographic changes from year to year are almost imperceptibly small in social work, masking the substantial changes that have occurred over the past several decades. Tracing the growth of one future-oriented source of data--social work education--over nearly three decades, we focus on selected demographic characteristics of gender, race and ethnicity, and age of recent graduates and faculty of social work programs in the United States.
Demographic characteristics of a profession can be obtained from various sources, each with its own advantages and limitations. In 31 states, the title "social worker" is restricted to professionals educated in social work, but title protection laws vary considerably across states. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in the U.S. Department of Labor is perhaps the most comprehensive source of data on individuals who are employed in social work. BLS statistics from 2000 indicated that social workers then held 468,000 jobs in the United States (http://www.bls. gov/oco/ocos060.htm). Unfortunately, individuals holding the title of social worker may have no formal training in social work, and professionally educated and other-trained social workers are mixed together in the BLS survey data (Barth, 2003).
Data gathered periodically by NASW also merit consideration. NASW first surveyed its members about demographic characteristics in 1961, and did so again in 1982 ("Membership Survey" 1983). A more comprehensive effort was undertaken from 1986 to 1987, when NASW began to build a computerized membership database (see Gibelman & Schervish, 1997). The limitations of the data collection format were improved upon in the following year, and using 1988 and 1991 data based on this instrument, NASW published Who We Are: The Social Work Labor Force as Reflected in the NASW Membership (Gibelman & Schervish, 1993).A second edition, based on 1995 data, was published in 1997. However, the authors estimated that approximately 32 percent of professionally trained social workers are NASW members, thus raising questions about the generalizability of the data. A recently released study, based on a stratified random sample of 10,000 licensed social workers, partially overcomes this problem, but nonetheless achieved only a 49 percent response rate (Center for Workforce Studies, 2006).
Changes in the demographics and size of the professional workforce can also be understood by examining Council of Social Work Education (CSWE) annual reports, Statistics on Social Work Education. With the establishment of CSWE in 1952, the profession had a mandate to gather demographic data on the faculty and students in its schools of social work, which then included Canadian schools. The council has been gathering information on accredited schools of social work since its inception and, although such data were initially limited in scope, CSWE has published an annual report since 1958. With the exception of a small number of international graduates working in the United States, all professionally trained social workers in this country were trained in CSWE-accredited schools of social work.
Thus, the CSWE reports provide the most complete data on the immediate future and recent past--individuals who are currently enrolled and those who just graduated. The large majority of these individuals enter the profession immediately or soon after graduation, and most will remain in social work for several decades. In sum, the CSWE data set provides a uniquely comprehensive description of virtually all professionally educated social workers at the time they enter the profession. Moreover, CSWE annual reports provide a similar demographic portrait of the faculty who shape future social workers and develop social work knowledge.
METHOD
Composed of tables depicting the demographics of social work students and faculty in accredited BSW and MSW programs and doctoral programs (the latter not accredited by CSWE), the annual CSWE report is issued to all schools of social work and many university libraries. Some demographic trends among professionally educated social workers were gathered by various organizations in the years before the establishment of CSWE, and thereafter the council continued to gather limited demographic data during the first two decades of its existence. Beginning in 1974, CSWE issued its first annual report including only U.S. schools, increased the range of variables tracked, and compiled the data in a reporting format used to the present. Accordingly, the present study primarily draws on CSWE data for the years 1974 through 2000, and in particular the expanded data available beginning in 1981. To examine trends over time, we made comparisons across the years of 1974, 1981, 1991, and 2000. (Although the 2001 data were not available when these comparisons herein were made, changes from one year to another are very small). Particular attention was given to dynamic changes or variables that remain relatively static in the face of broader population changes.
RESULTS
The Early Years
By way of background, it is useful to observe that in 1950 there were 47 graduate schools of social work in the United States accredited by the Association of Schools of Social Work, including eight offering doctoral degrees in addition to the master's degree (U.S. Department of Labor, 1951). Together, these schools produced slightly fewer than 2,000 graduates annually. In 1953, CSWE reported that 58 percent of 1,844 MSW graduates were women (CSWE, 1953). According to the U.S. Department of Labor (1951), 68 percent of the approximately 450 full-time social work educators in the United States were women. Consistent with declines in the size of the college-age population, professional schools of social work experienced steady declines in enrollment during the early to mid 1950s.
By 1960, 2,162 women (57 percent) and men received MSW degrees from 56 graduate schools of social work. Approximately a third of enrolled MSW students were age 25 or younger, and a like proportion were ages 26 through 30. By 1970, 70 accredited schools awarded 5,638 MSW degrees, 61 percent to women. Men accounted for 62 percent of the 84 doctorates awarded. More than 44 percent of students were age 25 or younger, and 31 percent were 26 to 30. CSWE was by then tracking racial and ethnic data, including eight self-reported designations that remain in use today. Findings revealed the following proportions of enrolled students: white, 76 percent; African American, 14.5 percent; Puerto Rican, 2.5 percent;...
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