Reimagining Social Work Education: A Systems-Thinking Approach to a BSW/MSW Program for Community College Students

Community college students are an untapped reservoir of talent and including them in social work education aligns with the values of the profession. Yet these students encounter formidable obstacles on the path from a 2-year degree to an affordable social work degree. In this article, we describe the systems thinking underlying a newly instituted Bachelor of Social Work completer program and how this approach was used to address barriers posed by the transfer process. Such an analysis reveals ways to intervene and simplify the process. As our case illustrates, systems thinking sets the stage for social work education to be re-imagined as a national workforce pipeline rather than a collection of accredited programs at independent colleges and universities.

Automated summary

Community college students face numerous obstacles in pursuing social work education, requiring new approaches to address these challenges. By using systems thinking, interventions and simplifications can be identified to transform social work education into a national workforce pipeline.