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Nancy Creaghead (The ASHA Leader, Nov. 21, 2002) muses about the precipitous decline in undergraduate enrollment in communication sciences and disorders programs during the past three years, most notably among freshman, concluding that members need to recruit students. But she offers no reason for this striking drop in majors. Unless reasons are found, recruitment and retention of undergraduates could be futile. However, two articles in the same issue provide clues. Each exemplifies tendencies and behaviors reflecting a long-standing professional orientation toward clinical practice. One, the lead article, advocates employing research methodology as an integral part of clinical practice. The other suggests ways to encourage parents to accept the clinicians' decisions when the two parties disagree. Not to consider patients' and caregivers' feelings on par with their behaviors nor their right to be fully functioning partners in the clinical process is to be oddly out-of-date and ineffective. Even the once staid and authoritarian medical profession now incorporates complementary healing practices and views patients as co-collaborators in their own treatment. What 18-year-old living in our cultural milieu that encompasses individualism and expression and ownership of feelings would embrace a clinical approach characterized by authoritarianism and bean counting? Until communication sciences and disorders adopts a core set of attitudes and skills that equip clinicians to partner with people who need assistance living fuller, more rewarding lives, instead of merely tabulating their behaviors, we can expect a continuing decline of undergraduate majors.
Ellen-Marie Silverman
Milwaukee, WI
esilverman@thespeechsource.com
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