Testing Competing Hypotheses: Comparing Community College and BSW Students’ Cultural Competency

Background and Purpose: Community colleges may present an opportunity to help meet the anticipated demand for social workers, which is projected to increase by 6% over the next 10 years (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025). Moreover, community colleges may help diversify the profession, given their high enrollment of historically underrepresented groups (Rempel, 2020a), while also addressing looming concerns about the cost of higher education combined with decreased financial support for ‘non-professional’ schools. Yet, the Council on Social Work Education has been hesitant to accredit associate in social work programs (Rempel, 2020a), which may be a result of the concerns about community college students’ skills (Rempel, 2020b). Therefore, the purpose of this exploratory study was to examine whether differences exist in a key competence of social work – cultural competency – between community college (CC) and Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) students. We specifically examined constructs of cultural awareness and knowledge outlined by the National Association of Social Workers (2015) to test three competing hypotheses: no difference between CC and BSW students; CC students have better cultural competency skills; and CC students have worse cultural competency skills.

Methods: We examined six cultural competency indicators from the “Promoting Cultural and Linguistic Competency Self-Assessment Checklist for Personnel Providing Primary Health Care Services” measure (Goode, 2002). The indicators included: avoidance of imposing values, acceptance of varying degrees of acculturation and differences in defining family structures, understanding life cycle factors and differences in mental illness, grief and customs, perceptions of health, recognizing differences in medical treatment, religious beliefs and emotional well-being, and pursuing trainings to enhance cultural competency. An independent samples t-test evaluated differences in each indicator between CC and BSW students. Cohen’s d was used to examine effect sizes.

Results: The sample comprised of 25 BSW and 23 CC students (N = 48), 66.7 % identified as Black female. Compared to BSW students, CC students showed worse scores for acceptance of varying degrees of acculturation among culturally diverse backgrounds (t (46) = -3.60, p<.001, d = -1.04) and accepting differences in defining family structures (t (46) = -2.68, p=.010, d = -0.77). No other significant differences were detected.

Conclusions and Implications: With the exception of a couple of indicators of cultural competencies, the findings suggest that CC students were comparable to BSW students, tentatively supporting the notion that accrediting programs at community colleges could be a viable pipeline to expand access to the social work profession which could also reduce financial barriers to obtaining a BSW degree. Future research could examine the development of formal partnerships between associate of social work and BSW programs to create affordable pathways and diversify the social work profession.