Socio-economic status, educational debt, and career choices of social work students in the Southeast United States

ABSTRACT

An important goal of the social work profession is to maintain a qualified and accessible professional workforce across all practice areas. Little is known about socio-economic diversity among social work students and potential associations with career choices. The purpose of this project is to describe economic circumstances of social work students and to explore any associations between socio-economic status, debt, intent to stay in the social work profession, and their desired practice area. In this sample of social work students in the Southeastern United States, we find that the majority of students work and accrue student loan debt while in school. Parents’ education level was associated with preference to work in healthcare, mental health/substance abuse, and education settings over nonprofit settings. Parents’ income level had a non-linear association with likelihood of staying in the social work field. Students rated stability and health insurance as more important to choosing a job than salary. We find some potential influence of socio-economic status on career choices of social work students. Given this potential influence, educators should provide information about the features of different practice areas in the social work field and strategies for managing debt after graduation, especially for first generation students.

KEYWORDS:

• Social work
• student
• career choice
• socio-economic status
• educational debt
• salary
• compensation

Acknowledgments

Preliminary findings for this survey were presented at the Council of Social Work Education Annual Program Meeting, 2019. The authors wish to thank attendees for thoughtful discussion about our topic and content. Any errors are solely the authors’.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

We received no funding for this study.

Notes on contributors

Bethany Womack

Bethany Womack, PhD, MSSW, is an assistant professor at UTC with research interests in assessment of human serving systems and social work pedagogy.

Junrong Shi

Junrong Shi, PhD, is an assistant professor at UTC. Dr. Shi’s research interests include aging, health disparities, and caregiver support in addition to social work education.