The Counseling Compact: Trojan Horse for an Ideological Monopoly - CACREP Antitrust Part 5

Why antitrust lawyers should be watching the counseling profession closely.

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This is part 5 of a series. (Go to - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 6)

What happens to kids when school counselors are taught that all white people are privileged oppressors and all brown people are marginalized, unable to succeed on their own steam without reduced requirements and preferential treatment? What happens when those ideas reflect the values of the counseling profession, and the accreditation body is consuming competitors and locking dissidents out?

We are in the process of finding out.

The CACREP-CORE Merger and the 20/20 Vision

In the fall of 2015, the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Educational Programs (CACREP) released a Dear Colleague letter announcing its merger with the Council on Rehabilitation Education (CORE).

This was noteworthy because CORE was one of only two accreditation bodies to participate in developing the 20/20: A Vision of the Future of Counseling initiative. This initiative was prompted by the American Association of State Counseling Boards (AASCB) which was concerned about the “lack of unity within the counseling profession.”

Differences in licensing across state lines resulted in a variety of regulations and job titles which made it difficult to build a pathway whereby counselors could easily work in all states. It’s not directly stated in available reports, but based on outcomes there may have been concerns that the profession didn’t have a consistent ideology either.

The purpose of the 20/20 Vision was to hammer out these differences by reorienting counselor training curriculum around the 12 desired futures, ideas dreamed up in counseling conventions the mid-1980s. Big ideas included missions like recruiting students with an eye for diversity and requiring practitioners to adopt multiculturalism as a value. 

Accreditations role was to require counselor education programs adhere to those professional visions.

With enforced agreement on this course of action, the plan was to be ready by 2020 with a uniform professional identity and corresponding licensure for the launch of the AASCB licensure portability plan.

Ideological Conformity Disguised as Professional Unity

What the 20/20 Vision report fails to explicitly state is that the philosophy and core body of knowledge intended to unify the counseling profession was repackaged racism and gender bigotry sealed in a wrapper of multiculturalism. You can see the shocking results in Derald Wing Sue’s Counseling the Culturally Diverse and other textbooks today, though the ideological seeds were planted nearly 40 years ago.

Counseling Futures, the written account of leadership convention meetings that developed the 12 desired futures for counseling, even called for the following:

9. It will be essential that contemporary counselors be personally committed to helping clients gain an understanding of the strengths and benefits of living in a multicultural society.

That sounds exactly like using the therapy space to indoctrinate clients into an ideology. Perhaps that’s why the 20/20 report scrubbed that detail from the record.

The Search For a Professional Identity

In a way, the counseling profession was simply repeating what had happened to them. Prior to the development of an explicit counseling license, counselors were allowed to be licensed as psychologists, as that was the only independent practice license available.

In 1963, following the passage of the Community Mental Health Act (CMHA), psychologists moved to limit licensure access to those with a psychology degree. Some practitioners now defined as working outside the law were even arrested under the new restrictions.

Yet despite bureaucratic changes the public couldn’t distinguish between professions that largely did the same work. Social workers, marriage and family therapists, counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists were all fighting to settle which piece of talk therapy belonged to them.

With each group scrambling for dominance, confusion reigned. The race to claim authority over therapy had begun.

Enter Critical Theories, and exit scientific study.

CACREP’s Exclusionary Tactics: A Closer Look

So when CACREP released its Dear Colleague letter in the fall of 2015, it was in the spirit of coalescing the profession around the bigoted body of “research” it had amassed under the banner of advocacy and multicultural counseling.

It set the tone as follows:

There is no question that counseling will face challenges both in terms of external threats and internal differences. There is also no question our profession is most effective in facing these challenges when we work together.

While it was unstated, this ‘working together,’ had already excluded any psychology degree-based counselors, specifically graduates of Masters in Psychology and Counseling Accreditation Council (MPCAC) accredited programs.

The reasons for this exclusion are never specified, but the MPCAC wasn’t part of the 20/20 Vision meetings. It also was absent from earlier gatherings. A clue may be in the Chi Sigma Iota (CSI) account of the 1998 invitation-only Counseling Leadership Conference, which noted among the obstacles to the grand plan: 

• Many members of counseling associations including those who work in counselor education are not professional counselors and do not share our passion or efforts for advocacy.

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CACREP’s 2016 Dear Colleague letter continues:

July was a historic month for CACREP and for the counseling profession! On July 20th, 2015, CACREP and CORE signed a merger agreement (effective July 1st, 2017), creating the pathway for a single accrediting body for all counseling programs. 

While this passage tacitly acknowledges the existence of MPCAC and a handful of other accrediting bodies, the ultimate goal couldn’t be more clear, a monopoly in counseling accreditation. It immediately continues:

On the very next day, the American Counseling Association (ACA) Governing Council passed motions that ACA endorse, support, and advocate for graduation from CACREP/CORE accredited programs, both as the pathway for independent practice and as part of ACA’s legislative advocacy efforts. These events strengthen advocacy efforts for all counselors by clearly communicating that counseling is one profession; a profession in agreement regarding the importance of a common set of educational and training standards for its members.

The letter makes mention of grandfathering in counselors who graduated under different accreditation. Yet six years later, as the fruits of the 20/20 Vision began to ripen into legislative action creating the counseling compact, there are no such token concessions mentioned.

The irony of a group within the arena of ‘helping’ professions once excluded from psychology-based licensure rebounding to return fire couldn’t be more sharp if it was happening amongst different sects of nuns.

The Role of CSI in Reinforcing the Monopoly

In a webinar organized by Chi Sigma Iota (CSI), the counseling honor society and incubator of future leaders in the counseling profession, featuring

• M. Sylvia Fernandez, President and CEO of CACREP,

• Holly J. Hartwig Moorhead, CEO of CSI, and

• Kelly Duncan, Executive Director of the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES),

we learn that there is even more to this story.

This webinar was part of a series organized to inspire advocacy for restricted standards to be included in the counseling compact, standards suspiciously similar to the CACREP standards.

At the top of the broadcast, Holly Moorehead shares the purpose CSI was created for. Starting at 9.15 seconds she states:

In 1985 CSI was strategically established to complement the development essential to components of our counseling profession, licensure, accreditation, credentialing and further identifying ourselves as professional counselors.

That explains so many things. From CSI sponsoring the invitation-only conferences, CSI preserving the record in Counseling Futures, and CSI calling for advocacy to be adopted as the hallmark of counseling. It's no wonder the CSI by-laws specifically restrict CSI chapters to CACREP-accredited universities when it was created to serve that purpose.

A 60-Credit Rule, or Gatekeeping Tool?

Sylvia Fernandez then comes to the fore. While she touts the successes of CACREP accreditation being required in four states, she breaks with the American Counseling Association (ACA), failing to mention MPCAC accreditation as legitimate competition and hammering home the importance of a 60 credit hour degree requirement, a specification the ACA does not share.

Nor does she mention how this fragmentation of licensure amongst professional titles often doing the same work costs state government thousands of dollars as they repeatedly duplicate the same system across as many as six different professional titles all doing talk therapy with a few additional bells and whistles.

Instead, she insists CACREP standards were developed, “by the profession, for the profession.” She makes clear that counselors must fight to maintain this hard-won “professional identity.” She references four different plans, that would regulate the profession under the compact. These plans are not displayed on the webinar, so we can only guess what they include, but we can note that Fernandez encourages listeners to “see how they are different and similar,” in order to make a good decision.

While the conversation is understated, covering details about moving states, and past requirements, with encouragement to consider what would ‘elevate’ the profession, the underlying relationships between the organizations that these women oversee couldn’t be more clear about what is going on here. Prior statements, actions, and exclusions speak for themselves.

Antitrust Analysis: Legal Red Flags

Under U.S. antitrust law, Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act prohibit agreements that unreasonably restrain trade and monopolistic practices. The CACREP-CORE merger eliminated a direct competitor, reducing accreditation options and potentially increasing costs or limiting innovation in counseling education. 

The ACA’s endorsement, following closely on the merger, suggests a coordinated effort to establish CACREP as the sole standard, raising clear Section 1 red flags, by creating an exclusionary agreement. Not to mention the language of the letter, directly stating that intent.

CSI’s CACREP-only membership rules amplify this by restricting access to professional networks, a textbook case of market foreclosure under Section 2.

The letter’s grandfathering clause for counselors licensed before July 2020 allowing existing non-CACREP practitioners to continue but sets a timeline for new counselors to come from CACREP programs, effectively phasing out competitors like MPCAC had they stuck with that plan

Yet here five years later, and that isn’t even on the table, leaving MPCAC graduates in limbo as to whether they will be able to work with the rest of the counseling profession through the compact.

This mirrors tactics seen in other higher education antitrust cases, such as the DOJ’s 2019 lawsuit against the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) for restraining competition in student recruitment (DOJ vs. NACAC).

Broader Context: Antitrust in Higher Education

Antitrust scrutiny in higher education is growing, with accreditation identified as a potential legal risk. The Chronicle of Higher Education notes that the National Association of College and University Attorneys flagged accreditation as a concern. The DOJ’s NACAC case and other lawsuits against universities for monopolistic practices (e.g., textbook sales, admissions) highlight that nonprofit entities are not immune to antitrust laws. 

In counseling, CACREP’s actions mirror these trends, potentially creating barriers for non-CACREP programs and reducing diversity in training approaches, which could stifle innovation and harm clients.

Conclusion: From Accreditation to Ideological Capture

The 2015 CACREP letter and the 2021 CSI webinar, combined with CSI’s exclusionary policies, suggest a coordinated effort to make CACREP the dominant accreditor, potentially violating antitrust laws by reducing competition and excluding non-CACREP programs. 

While CACREP claims these actions promote professional quality, the institutionalization of bigotry in therapy argues otherwise. The potential and active harm to clients demands scrutiny.

Regulators like the DOJ and FTC should investigate these practices to ensure a competitive market for counseling education. The result is not just an academic squabble, it’s a pipeline producing ideologues not healers.

In Part 6, we’ll explore policy solutions to balance quality with innovative techniques, ensuring clients have access to qualified counselors representing a variety of worldviews and beliefs.

This is part 5 of a series. (Go to - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 6)

Further Reading

On Being a Profession: A Historical Perspective on Counselor Licensure and Accreditation by Gerard Lawson

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About

Diogenes in Exile began after I returned to grad school to pursue a Clinical Mental Health Counseling master’s degree at the University of Tennessee. What I encountered, however, was a program deeply entrenched in Critical Theories ideology. During my time there, I experienced significant resistance, particularly for my Buddhist practice, which was labeled as invalidating to other identities. After careful reflection, I chose to leave the program, believing the curriculum being taught would ultimately harm clients and lead to unethical practices in the field.

Since then, I’ve dedicated myself to investigating, writing, and speaking out about the troubling direction of psychology, higher education, and other institutions that seem to have lost their way. When I’m not working on these issues, you’ll find me in the garden, creating art, walking my dog, or guiding my kids toward adulthood.

You can also find my work at Minding the Campus