Trained to Obey: Required Grading of Counseling Students on 'Dispositions' Part 2

When your future depends on ‘the right’ beliefs, is it really an education?

The professor’s voice rang out like a summons. “Reflect on how your whiteness has harmed people of color. Then share with the class.”

For thirty minutes, she had spoken about privilege, oppression, and the burden of whiteness. Students had nodded along, scribbling in their notebooks, careful not to appear disengaged. But now?

Now, she was asking for confessions. The room was silent. Students stared ahead, waiting, calculating. Speak, and risk saying the wrong thing. Stay silent, and risk being seen as the wrong kind of person. It was a trap, and they all knew it.

Across the country, counseling students are experiencing something like this. While I got out of my program before taking the notorious Multicultural Counseling class, from the very beginning we were encouraged to openly share racist misdeeds, thoughts, and short-comings. And we were introduced to our own whiteness as being a problem.

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With the costs of ideological gatekeeping and grading based on compliance over ability fresh in mind, let’s examine how the Council for Accreditation in Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) directs training programs to evaluate students like those described above.

First, we’ll examine the standard and then how that evaluation process is presented to students in program handbooks.

While I will mention specific programs out of necessity, the standard applies to all accredited programs. My intent is not to overly shame or stigmatize but to point out how the standard calls for overstepping boundaries.

Some programs may be more eagerly adopting that message than others, or what appear to be the worst offenders may, in fact, be programs erring on the side of more transparency, which is both revealing and also legitimately allows students to make a somewhat more informed choice.

What Research Shows is Happening - Standards

In the process of looking up every CACREP-accredited counselor training program in the country, all 472 colleges and universities, I also took the time to grab any available program handbooks.

The CACREP Standards require that students demonstrate certain ‘dispositions.’ They also require that program handbooks include information about assessment procedures on these grounds. According to CACREP:

Academic quality is determined by evaluation of program mission and objectives and assessment of students’ knowledge, skills, and professional dispositions.

The purpose of student evaluation is for counselor education program faculty to continuously monitor student demonstration of key knowledge, skills, and dispositions to prepare them for practice as a counselor.

CACREP’s other regulations cover how often these need to be assessed, how teachers should handle that, and details of how doctoral programs factor in. It all seems reasonable enough until you get to the glossary and the end, which makes clear just what CACREP means by dispositions:

Professional Dispositions

The commitments, characteristics, values, beliefs, and behaviors that influence the counselor’s professional growth and interactions with clients, faculty, supervisors, and peers, including working in a diverse, multicultural, and global society with marginalized populations.

And there we have it. The accreditors mandate that professors have license to evaluate students on values, beliefs, and behaviors, period.

That is outrageous enough, but CACREP goes on to stipulate, evaluations include judging trainees’ values, beliefs, and behaviors through the lens of “working in a diverse, multicultural, and global society with marginalized populations.”

What the Research Shows - Handbooks

Some master’s programs tread the line of assessing dispositions lightly, with obviously indoctrinating elements limited to asking for students to show respect for diversity. At least, that’s all we can glean from the documentation of those that chose a minimalist approach to describe their evaluation process. 

Other Counselor training programs were more direct.

Take Emporia State University, for example. In its handbook for K-12 school counselors, on page 17 - 18, we read how candidates are introduced to, and expected to display and enhance certain dispositions through the program. These dispositions include values, commitment, and professional mindsets. 

The handbook goes on that these dispositions reflect beliefs and attitudes such as social justice and that “candidates are accountable for behaviors in or outside of class that do not represent the spirit of the dispositions.

On page 26, it quotes the CACREP standard regarding professional counseling identity, which includes a lengthy section on social and cultural diversity, multiculturalism and the effects of power and privilege in the counseling room.

In the program at the University of Tennessee, where I was a student, we were often lectured by faculty about the importance of developing this ‘professional counseling identity.’ We were expected to adopt this identity as an overlay of who we truly were, suppressing any conflicting religious beliefs or worldviews we had.

The intent was to remake us down to our values to represent and advocate for social justice or whatever was deemed the orthodoxy by counseling’s professional bodies like CACREP or the American Counseling Association (ACA), thus fulfilling goals for counseling laid down in 1988.

On page 30 of Emporia State University’s counseling handbook, students are informed that dispositions will be assessed. The handbook specifically states that faculty look for a commitment to professionalism and ethical standards and require students to display a “respect for cultural and individual differences by providing equitable learning opportunities for all.”

Some Handbooks Are Even More Strident

Another example is the University of Arkansas. Its handbook contains multiple red flags that students should be aware of. Failure to comply will waste their tuition dollars and efforts.

Our first indication that the ground is shaky comes on page 4 with a Statement of Beliefs. Those considered important enough to be placed at the top are as follows:

In order to graduate high quality and effective counselors, we believe it is important to:

1. Develop a strong counselor identity in all students, knowledgeable of appropriate ethical codes and committed to ethical practice in order to protect clients and the profession.

2. Ensure that all graduates are committed to equity, diversity, inclusion, and anti-racism by cultivating and advocating for safe environments for clients, students, and supervisees.

3. Ensure graduates understand the interconnectedness of human development, mental health, and the counseling process.

4. Acknowledge the importance of work and career for creating a more socially-just society and ensure graduates are able to provide competent career counseling services to any and all clients and students.

It does not end there. On the next page, it lists under Objectives:

Graduates will:

2. Provide culturally responsive counseling to clients from diverse background [sic] and engage in action to increase equity, diversity, and inclusion for all clients.

4. Comprehend the interrelatedness between career development, mental health, interpersonal relationship [sic], and various life roles and apply developmentally appropriate, culturally responsive, and ethical career counseling services.

7. Select culturally and ethically appropriate assessments for diagnosis, treatment planning, and intervention and program evaluation.

The very next page addresses Desired Student Qualities. Those include accountability, personal and professional growth, and commitment—with special emphasis on:

Equal accessibility: students should be sensitive to the inequities many groups and individuals experience.

The list continues. Faculty want students to have an evolving personal philosophy, professional identity, research orientation, and attend to leadership.

Students are required to create a portfolio throughout the program, which includes a paper describing their view of human nature, why people have dysfunctional behavior and the goals of counseling.

While such an exercise could be quite helpful to a trainee, learning to think through their own understanding of the world and the profession they are about to embark upon, it is important to remember this is being viewed in the context of evaluating dispositions including values, beliefs, and commitments from a social justice framework.

On page 38 there is an Informed Consent Agreement. That agreement, which must be signed, co-signed by an advisor, and dated, includes the following stipulations:

Through the program of study, you will be given feedback concerning your personal, intellectual, and professional strengths, challenge areas, and performance. This feedback will come from faculty, supervisors (doctoral and site supervisors), peers, and clients. You will be expected to deal with this feedback in a mature and professional manner.

The Counselor Education program curriculum is designed to help you explore and recognize the effect that your personal beliefs, issues, emotions, and behaviors have on your ability to function as a counseling professional…You will be asked to examine your behaviors, beliefs, and emotions in relations [sic] to your professional activities and experiences on an ongoing basis.

The Counselor Education faculty members believe they have a responsibility to dismiss students who are unable to render competent service due to academic limitations. If, in the professional judgment of a faculty member, a student's professional behavior is deemed substandard, unethical, illegal, and/or professionally unbecoming at any time during the course of training (including course work, practica, and internship), a faculty committee will be called to review the performance and behavior of the student and to make recommendations to the Department Head.

This handbook goes on for many many pages about Professional Characteristics, procedures for retention and dismissal, professional conduct, and academic standards.

But the kicker is all of the talk about evaluating student beliefs is done under the shadow of instruction students will receive about the importance of incorporating into counseling the ideas of white supremacy, systemic oppression, multiculturalism, postmodernism, and the primary importance of identity based on immutable characteristics of race, sexual orientation, gender beliefs, disability status, sex etc.

Closing: From Silence to Scrutiny

The classroom silence described at the outset doesn’t reflect just discomfort—it is a warning. When students are judged not on their competence, but on their willingness to confess, comply, and conform, the field of counseling shifts from a profession rooted in ethics and individual care to one of ideological purification.

This is not an isolated moment in a single classroom. It is the product of a system built to shape not just counselors' skills, but their very beliefs. The standards set by CACREP, enforced through program handbooks and faculty evaluations, make it clear: counseling students must adopt an approved worldview, or risk academic consequences.

In the next part of this discussion, we’ll dive deeper into how accreditation standards create the conditions for this kind of ideological coercion. By examining specific CACREP requirements and how they manifest in program policies, we can better understand the mechanisms by which future counselors are molded—not just as professionals, but as ideological adherents.

Jump to - When Straight A’s Aren’t Enough: The ‘Disposition’ Scam in Universities - Part 1

Trained to Betray: How Ideologically Captured Counselor Training Hurts Vulnerable Kids Part 3

How Therapy Became a Re-Education Camp — CACREP Dispositions Part 4

The Psychological Takeover: How Therapy is Becoming a Tool of Oppression, Dispositions - Part 5

Further Reading

Accreditation on the Edge: Challenging Quality Assurance in Higher Education by Susan Phillips and Kevin Kinder

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About

Diogenes in Exile began after I returned to grad school to pursue a Clinical Mental Health Counseling master’s degree at the University of Tennessee. What I encountered, however, was a program deeply entrenched in Critical Theories ideology. During my time there, I experienced significant resistance, particularly for my Buddhist practice, which was labeled as invalidating to other identities. After careful reflection, I chose to leave the program, believing the curriculum being taught would ultimately harm clients and lead to unethical practices in the field.

Since then, I’ve dedicated myself to investigating, writing, and speaking out about the troubling direction of psychology, higher education, and other institutions that seem to have lost their way. When I’m not working on these issues, you’ll find me in the garden, creating art, walking my dog, or guiding my kids toward adulthood.

You can also find my work at Minding the Campus