subject: _:node15e554ef5c2594563745a7dd89b3d43
obj: "\nYou\u2019re definitely right about the need to do such a survey. The deans in NY state are partnering with a workforce center to do exactly what you suggest. There are real challenges with this approach though, specifically:1) who will pay for it? it\u2019s expensive to do it. NY State Deans are chipping in together, but it will be much more expensive nationally.2) Universities \u201Close\u201D alumni, by which I mean that over time, your address data is out of date. It\u2019s pretty easy to get data on recent grads\u2014much harder when people have been out a while.3) Ultimately, I think the professional license boards are probably best positioned to do the survey, but it\u2019s not included in their work scope. And most of those departments are understaffed. And there will still be people who won\u2019t be captured in that dataset (probably that hospice CEO, for example). Finally, because they exist at the state level (not nationally) there\u2019s lots of variation from state to state.\nIf we had one big professional organization that both accredited schools and was the professional association, it might be easier to fund this. However, social work has two different organizations for these functions, unlike many other health professions. \nUltimately what would probably work (just thinking out loud here) would be a federal mandate for license departments to collect salary data when people renew their licenses and then for that data to be pooled nationally. \nJust a final thought about making sense of salary data\u2013one has to look at cost of living differences. 40k goes much further in Buffalo, NY than in Manhattan. There are plenty of web-based cost-of-living adjustment/comparison tools that can help with this.\n"