3.6 What about the training and pay?
Devin Lukachik and Whitney Chappell
Devin’s tips on how to get ahead are certainly helpful, but what about the practical requirements of the profession? What sorts of training is needed to become an SLP, and what is the pay scale like in school and clinic settings?
Transcript: “Yeah, so to be an SLP, you have to get a Masters degree, uh, it doesn’t matter what your Bachelors is in, people recommend getting Communication Sciences and Disorders, but often people go in with Bachelors in linguistics, other languages, or psychology, or all kinds of different things. Uh, so you have to go into graduate program, get your Masters degree, and that also includes, uh, a certain amount of clinical experience, and so our governing organization, ASHA, uh, sets that at 400 hours of clinical experience alongside the didactic coursework, um, and then once you’ve gone through your Masters you get, you take a licensing exam um, and you go into a clinical fellowship year, which is like your first job out of graduate school, and you get paid for that, it’s not just like a clinical internship, um, and you’re supervised a little bit of the time, but really the fellowship is just a transitional period, um, and then you’re on your own after that. So the payscale for different positions in speech pathology really depends on the site that you’re in as well as the region. Um, it can really be specific to different settings, so it’s a wide range. Um, on the lower end of that, it can be like private clinics, some private practices don’t pay as well, kind of in the $50,000 range, but on the upper end, I’d say what is typical is probably $75,000 to $85,000 up to $100,000 and in rare cases more if you’re specialized.”
Like any job, salary is dependent on where you are, and there are many SLPs in major cities that make well over $150,000, but those are in areas with higher cost of living. Being bilingual can certainly earn you more than a monolingual SLP. There are also the rare SLPs who earn much, much more by owning their own practice, entering a managerial role, obtaining a PhD and conducting research with an academic institution, or achieving board certification in a specific specialty. Currently, board certifications exist for swallowing disorders, fluency disorders, child language disorders, and neurogenic communication disorders. These coveted certifications open up even greater opportunities for ambitious SLPs. And while there are certainly more lucrative careers in healthcare, there are very few that allow the same flexibility and work-life balance. Devin loves his job every day, and he says that even if he could do it all again, he wouldn’t change a thing.
