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ate program. This would leave 2 years of master’s work for truly advanced education and clinical work. This structure could parallel that in speech-language pathology; undergraduate audiology majors would receive two surveytype courses in speech-language pathology, just as current speech-language pathology majors receive such coursework in audiology. The focus, however, would be on audiology and hearing science as an undergraduate, especially during the final 2 years. Six years of college education should be more than adequate to enable students to achieve the highest level of competence as audiologists, as long as a significant amount of the educational process was allowed to take place during the first 2 years. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) has recently recognized that speech-language pathology and audiology are two separate professions, with professional responsibilities and educational needs unique to each profession. Having recognized this, it then seems only logical to develop equivalent and parallel educational guidelines for each profession. An undergraduate major in audiology and hearing sciences with a 2-year master’s program in audiology would parallel the existing educational model in speech-language pathology and would greatly improve the quality of education in audiology. To better illustrate these concepts, in Table 1 we describe in detail a model 6-year audiology curriculum currently under consideration at Indiana University. This curriculum is just one of many possible ways in which the education of audiologists can be improved within the existing bachelor’s/master’s framework. It is included here as only one specific example of how the general principles discussed above can be realized within an existing bachelor’s/ master’s educational framework. As seen in this table, the first 2 to 2.5 years of this curriculum are devoted to acquiring a broad base in the fundamentals: math, science, computer sciences, psychology, etc. As the student progresses through the curriculum, the content becomes more specialized and clinically oriented and the amount and diversity of clinical practicum also increases. In this particular model, on completion of the master’s Graduate Education in Audiology: We Agree With the Diagnosis, But Not the Treatment |
