Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Inside SLP is a limited series podcast that reveals how our profession came to be and why it functions the way it does. Most clinicians work inside a system they were never taught to see, shaped by decades of history, policy, economics, and unspoken assumptions. This show offers lightbulb moments that bring clarity to the structures beneath our everyday work and opens space for thoughtful, grounded understanding of the field we share.
Welcome to Inside SLP. This is a weekly ten minute podcast about how our profession came to be and where it is heading. Most of us work inside a system we were never really taught to see. InsideSLP offers a way to understand that system with more clarity, calm and context. Each week we explore one idea that helps illuminate the structures, histories, intentions shaping our field.
Megan Berg:This podcast is not about outrage or quick solutions. It's about understanding a complex profession so we can navigate it with more confidence and curiosity. I'm Megan Berg, let's look inside. I want to start today with something that's not easy to admit. When I was talking about these issues on social media loudly, confidently, and with the support of tens of thousands of SLPs, I truly believed the solution was very simple.
Megan Berg:Just get rid of the CCC. Stop paying for it. Tell employers it wasn't necessary. Push states to remove it from licensure requirements. Encourage SLPs everywhere to abandon it.
Megan Berg:Logical. It felt empowering. And maybe most powerfully, it felt very popular. It's a wild thing to have almost 50,000 people cheering you on. When your posts fill with comments like, Yes!
Megan Berg:And finally someone is saying this! And louder for the people in the back, it begins to feel like truth. And who wouldn't want to stop paying $250 a year for certification they earned long ago? It felt like obvious advocacy. It felt like clarity and it felt like a solution, but it wasn't.
Megan Berg:And I didn't know that yet. Everything changed for me in a single conversation with Doctor. Angela Lovenbrooke, former president of AAA, ASHA fellow, former ASHA board member, and recipient of honors of the Academy. We were talking about training models in SLP and audiology when she said something that stopped me cold. She said, and I'll paraphrase before playing her clip, Speech Language Pathology is not a professional degree because the clinical training is not wrapped into the degree.
Megan Berg:Here, I'll play the clip.
Megan Berg:You understand that when you get a master's degree, you do not get a master's degree in speech language pathology. You get a master's degree in a discipline, communication disorders and whatever the hell it's called. Because they can't that academic program cannot qualify you or call you a Your speech language practical training, they have nothing, no responsibility for that. The academic programs in audiology, in PT, and in OT, they are professional schools. So the clinical requirements, the practicum requirements are included in the degree program itself and the academic program, the professional school program is responsible for them.
Megan Berg:My mind rejected this at first. It didn't fit anything that I thought I understood and I couldn't make sense of it. It took me months, literally months to internalize what she was saying because this wasn't about semantics, it wasn't about a political debate around titles, and it's not about the Department of Education's loan classifications. It's about the architecture of our degree. OTs earn a Master or Doctor of Occupational Therapy.
Megan Berg:PTs earn Doctor of Physical Therapy. Audiologists earn a Doctor of Audiology. We earn a Master of Arts or a Master of Science. It's an academic degree, not a professional degree with embedded clinical training. And at that moment, everything I had been advocating for on social media became fragile because if the CCC disappeared tomorrow, do you know what else would disappear?
Megan Berg:A guaranteed pathway for supervised clinical training. That realization hit me like a tidal wave. And I'm sure there's some of you listening that are thinking, yeah, hello! That is valid. Graduate programs in SLP are accredited by the Council on Academic Accreditation, the CAA, which is an arm of ASHA.
Megan Berg:Within those standards, universities are only required to provide the opportunity for students to obtain three seventy five clinical hours. Provide the opportunity. Not ensure completion, not require supervised training for graduation. And yes, a student can graduate with a master's degree with zero clinical hours depending on the program and the student's plans. It doesn't happen often, but the fact that it can happen means something profound.
Megan Berg:The master's degree alone does not produce a clinically trained SLP. Once that truth clicked into place, I realized the enormity of what I had misunderstood. I saw the limits of my own knowledge. I saw the narratives I had amplified too quickly. I saw the seductive clarity of social media and how dangerously oversimplified it can become.
Megan Berg:It was gut wrenching, not because my intentions were wrong, but because I had moved way too fast. I had treated a deeply layered systemic issue like a slogan. And the system is not a slogan. It's a tangle of history, economics, accreditation policy, professional identity, and state regulation standards all woven together in ways that cannot survive flattening. This brings us to today's lightbulb moment.
Megan Berg:Social media creates the illusion of clarity by stripping away complexity. It rewards certainty, outrage, hot takes, performative stances, binary thinking, and quick solutions. The algorithmic nature of the platform does not reward history, context, humility, nuance, systems thinking, or slowness. And when a system is complex as ours is, certainty becomes a substitute for understanding. Outrage feels like action.
Megan Berg:Slogans feel like solutions. Echo chambers feel like consensus. I wasn't immune to that. None of us is. The platform is designed that way.
Megan Berg:Here's the truth I learned the very hardest way I possibly could. When the conversation moves too fast, accuracy is the first casualty. And without accuracy, systems level change becomes impossible. If we flatten the CCC into good bad, we miss the structural reasons it exists. If we flatten ASHA into hero or villain, we miss the economic constraints that shape its decisions.
Megan Berg:If we flatten state licensure into consistent or broken, we miss the political forces behind state variability. When we oversimplify the system, we lose the ability to change it. Because you can't fix what you don't understand and you can't understand what you oversimplify. So here's the invitation for today. What if we slowed down enough to let our understanding catch up to our conviction?
Megan Berg:What if we allowed ourselves to say, I don't know yet? This is more complicated than I realized. My certainty might be coming from a platform, not the facts. I need more context before I choose a position. What if curiosity became our professional stance?
Megan Berg:What if holding multiple conflicting truths felt less like weakness and more like wisdom? I invite you to just notice a moment this week when a post or comment sparks immediate outrage. Instead of reacting, ask what layer of the system is this conversation actually about? Talk offline with someone who sees the issue differently, not to debate or decide who's right and wrong, but just to map the complexity together. And replace one hot take with one sincere question.
Megan Berg:Because curiosity builds bridges and assumptions build walls. If you'd like to explore the system more deeply, I invite you to learn about the PACT survey, a large scale effort to understand how SLPs, audiologists, employers, educators, and consumers experience our profession. You can sign up for updates at pactsurvey.com. Your perspective is part of the story and your experience matters. This work is bigger than me and I am learning right alongside you.
Megan Berg:If today's episode sparked a question you'd like me to sit with, you can submit it at therapyinsights.com/insideslp. I don't respond one on one, but your questions help guide where we go next. Thank you for being here. This is Inside SLP, and I'll see you next week.