ABSTRACT
There are currently 39 schools of social work that are members of the Canadian Association for Social Work Education (CASWE) offering undergraduate and graduate social work programs; of these, 14 offer doctoral programs.1 Compared to programs in the United States, where the first doctoral program was established in 1917 (Reisch, 2002), Canadian programs are young but growing rapidly. The first Doctor of Social Work program was developed at the University of Toronto in 1952; it remained the only such program in Canada for more than 30 years, until additional programs opened at Wilfrid Laurier University and Laval University in 1987
(Shera, 2003). Doctoral education, however, has expanded rapidly in the past decade, with the number of such programs doubling to the present count of 14. This substantial increase is a reflection of enhanced government funding to universities for graduate-level education, as well as a commitment by academic leaders to allocate resources toward doctoral-level education in order to expand intellectual leadership (Council of Ontario Universities, 2012). Although the curricula vary across programs, the overarching goal is to produce graduates capable of independent research.
