Advisory committee begins deliberation on alternative licensure pathways and proposes free 'Jurisprudence Live' webinars

The Kansas BSRB professional counseling advisory committee devoted substantial discussion on May 12 to possible alternative pathways to licensure and a new voluntary jurisprudence webinar proposal.

David Fye framed the issue by noting questions from the board about whether standardized licensure examinations should remain the only route to higher-level licenses or whether years of experience and supervised practice could be accepted as alternatives for some candidates. He described the status quo (two levels of permanent licensure in Kansas and, for clinical advancement, requirements such as a higher exam pass point and roughly 3,000 postgraduate supervised hours). "Is 10 to 20 years of experience . . . sufficient to take the place of a higher score on a test?" Fye asked, emphasizing the need for careful, data-driven consideration.

Committee members raised tradeoffs: standardized exams provide a measurable minimum competency threshold, while exam disparities and workforce shortages motivate exploring alternatives. Several members warned that substituting experience for testing raises practical questions about how to evaluate and standardize those judgments across applicants.

On a related training proposal, Fye introduced "Jurisprudence Live," a free quarterly webinar for each profession that would walk licensees through jurisprudence questions interactively rather than charging for a repeated jurisprudence exam. He said the webinars would offer voluntary continuing-education credit, could be opened to students, and asked for volunteers to help design content and question language.

Members volunteered to help with the webinar content and to form subcommittees for the supervision manual and jurisprudence pilot; the committee agreed the licensure-pathways topic requires extended study and will continue as an ongoing agenda item. No formal policy changes were adopted at the meeting.