Audiology and SLP share a common history, but they did not share the same future. This episode traces the critical "divorce" of the 1980s, starting with a 1987 convention session in New Orleans that changed everything. We look at how audiologists identified the "Competency vs. Certification" trap and decided to rebuild their professional infrastructure from the ground up.

• The New Orleans spark: How a minority group within ASHA realized they would never achieve autonomy inside the existing majority.
• Competence vs. revenue: Why Audiology had to separate from a "certification-first" model to create the AuD.
• The 2020 mirror: How the same "bursting seams" found in Audiology 30 years ago are now documented facts in the SLP Master's degree.

This is a story about system literacy in action.

• Contact Megan: therapyinsights.com/insideslp
• PACT Survey: pactsurvey.com

Sources:
The Crabby Audiologist Column (published in Hearing Health and Technology Matters)

• The Crabby Audiologist - Who's Teaching Who, and When? — October 14, 2014
• Back to the Beginning - Some History and a Mystery — October 29, 2014
• Back to the Future of Audiology - Part 2 - The Tumultuous 70's — December 3, 2014
• Back to the Future - The Contentious 80's — December 31, 2014
• The 90's Onward: Fighting the Inevitable, the Mountain Moved and Promises Not Yet Kept — Jan. 21, 2015
• The Millenium - Crabby Audiologists Learning the Alphabet — February 10 2015
• With Friends Like These: A Strange Saga of "Teamwork" — February 24, 2015
• With Friends Like These: Continued — March 10, 2015
• Making a List - Checking It Twice: Someone's Been Very Naughty — March 31, 2015
• Commoditization: New/Old Kid on the Block — April 21, 2015
• Got Soul? Who Are We — May 5, 2015
• Our Place In the Sun: Value Added Audiology — May 19, 2015
• How's the Water or What Sea Are We Swimming In — June 2, 2015
• One Plus One Equals the Wrong Two - New Math Needed — June 23,2015

Are you failing, or is the system failing you? This episode explores the psychological and political costs of an under-built profession. Using the 2020 ASHA Ad Hoc Report, we look at how a lack of a unified competency framework leads to arbitrary power dynamics and "gratitude compliance." We also discuss the looming generational shift in state associations and the danger of leaving a vacuum of power that insurance lobbyists and competing disciplines are eager to fill.

• Subjective gatekeeping: Why "competence" feels like a personal judgment without objective rubrics.
• The certainty market: How structural gaps in grad school created an influencer economy that sells confidence as a product.
• The power vacuum: Why the decline in professional volunteering is a threat to our scope of practice.

This is an invitation to stop personalizing the friction and start seeing the architecture.

• Contact Megan: therapyinsights.com/insideslp
• PACT Survey: pactsurvey.com

Sources:

• Final Report, Ad Hoc Committee on Graduate Education for Speech-Language Pathologists, March 2020

Why has the Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) entry-level degree remained unchanged for over 70 years while the medical world evolved around it? This episode excavates the critical turning points of 1963 and 1983, where the profession repeatedly chose "Academic Purity" and economic convenience over clinical readiness.

We dive into the 2020 Ad Hoc Committee Report, a document that effectively pulled the fire alarm on our current training model.
You will learn:

• The Highland Park standoff: Why 1960s leaders feared a "vocational" degree and institutionalized the workaround we now call the Clinical Fellowship.
• The 1983 economic pivot: How the profession crunched the numbers and chose a model that favored immediate paychecks over university-owned clinical residencies.
• The modern crisis: Why 47% of modern graduate programs admit they may not have the capacity to teach the full scope of practice across the lifespan.
• The subtext of survival: A look at the faculty "deserts" and the hidden revenue needs that keep our accrediting systems anchored to a 1960s architecture.

This episode is about policy and also about removing the shame of the "training gap" by seeing it as a documented structural failure rather than a personal one.

• Contact Megan: therapyinsights.com/insideslp
• PACT Survey: pactsurvey.com

Sources:

• Malone, R. (1999). The first 75 years: An oral history of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
• Final Report, Ad Hoc Committee on Graduate Education for Speech-Language Pathologists, March 2020
• Graduate Education in Speech Pathology and Audiology: Report of a National Conference Highland Park, Illinois, April 29 Through May 3, 1963.
• National Conference on Undergraduate, Graduate, and Continuing Education (1983 : Saint Paul, Minn.); Rees, Norma S.; Snope, Trudy L.

SLP is the only allied health or education-adjacent profession that completes most of its clinical training after the degree. This episode unpacks how unusual that structure is and how it shapes hiring, supervision, billing, and professional identity. We explore why it affects nearly every tension we feel in the field today.

• Contact Megan: therapyinsights.com/insideslp
• PACT Survey: pactsurvey.com

Across the United States, speech-language pathology licensure looks wildly different from state to state. It's a patchwork of rules shaped not by a single national authority but by thousands of individual decisions over decades. This episode traces how school systems, state agencies, and clinician-run boards created a maze of inconsistent standards. And it reveals the surprising truth at the center of it all: The people regulating SLPs… are SLPs.

• Contact Megan: therapyinsights.com/insideslp
• PACT Survey: pactsurvey.com

Sources:

• New Jersey statutes
• Utah — Speech Language Technicians
• Idaho public school requirements
• North Dakota licensing rules and satutes
• Malone, R. (1999). The first 75 years: An oral history of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

A short note from Megan.

Inside SLP is a short, weekly podcast about the systems that shape speech-language pathology.

In ten minutes at a time, we explore how training, credentialing, licensure, and professional power came to look the way they do—and why so much of this structure remains unseen in day-to-day practice.

This isn’t a podcast about outrage or quick fixes.
It’s a slower, more reflective look at a complex profession we all work inside.

Each episode offers an idea to sit with. Something that adds context, surfaces tension, or helps the system come into focus.

The episodes build on one another, so if you’re new, I recommend starting with Episode 1.

I’m Megan Berg, and this is Inside SLP.

In 1969, Florida became the first state to license speech-language pathologists and audiologists, which reshaped the entire profession. But the fight for licensure started years earlier, fueled by fraud, unqualified practitioners, and the dawning realization that ASHA had no legal authority to protect the public or the profession. This episode dives into the drama, resistance, and grassroots organizing that led clinicians in Florida to say: “If we don’t regulate ourselves, someone else will.”

• Contact Megan: therapyinsights.com/insideslp
• PACT Survey: pactsurvey.com

Sources:

Malone, R. (1999). The first 75 years: An oral history of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.