Balance between learning and profit

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Melissa DeFrancesco on September 7, 2010 at 8:06am

Yes Kelly, tell it like it is sister! I am 100% on the same boat as you. I have come to accept our "no-entry" requirements but only because there is nothing I can do to change this. I do believe in the "changing lives" motto but I also believe that not everyone has what it takes. However, some students may have the best tactical skills and will become the most successful therapist but may need help getting through school academically. And vise versa.

I believe this is what has caused the whole "gainful employment" laws being thrown around in Congress right now. I do believe this is a good thing as we cannot allow student to incur massive amounts of debt without the possibility of achieving employment that would allow them to successfully pay these loans back. However, massage therapy programs could be in trouble as many therapists are self employed and may not accurratly report there income.

To combat these issues, without changing our enrollment procedures, I have begun meeting with all new students upon admission. I have them fill out an information sheet that not only let's them know about the requirements of the program (ie. it's more than just touching people) but also let's me know of any potential problems that could arise in the future. I can send you a copy of this form if you would like. I also try to gauge their intentions during this meeting and invite them to get a free massage from a more advanced student in the program. Many of them have never had the opportunity to have a massage before so this let's them do so. It also connects them with other students in the program. While I cannot say they are not allowed in the program, I can sway them from our program if I feel they are not going to be a good fit. This avoids an inevitable drop later on.

I hope this helps. At least you know that you are not alone...

Permalink Reply by Whitney Lowe on September 7, 2010 at 9:51am

An unfortunate aspect of this is that there are just too many schools. Consequently the competition is high to take as many students as possible regardless of their qualifications. It is a sad situation, but until some of these schools close and there is a more accurate balance in the number of schools and the number of "qualified" candidates, we will continue to see this being an issue.

Permalink Reply by Sandy Fritz on September 7, 2010 at 10:06am

The new organization Alliance for massage therapy educators is hoping to address at lease some of these issues. There is something going on with the gov based financial aid will affect enrollmentM. Do not give up

Permalink Reply by Jan Schwartz on September 7, 2010 at 10:47am

Kelly, There is a lot of information on this site about for profit schools and the newly proposed rules in the Dept. of Ed.
If you search through this free publication you will find lots of information on both sides of the story. The challenge in the massage field is that so many schools are not accredited and therefore will not fall under these rules. Non accredited schools have far less accountability. I'm not saying they are bad schools, just that they don't have to follow the same rules as accredited schools.

And I believe there are laws against predatory recruiting. Check the rules for proprietary schools within your state if your school is not accredited. If it is accredited check the standards of the accreditor. Everything can be found online.

Permalink Reply by Sandy Fritz on September 7, 2010 at 1:16pm

Jan Schwartz said:

Kelly, There is a lot of information on this site about for profit schools and the newly proposed rules in the Dept. of Ed.
If you search through this free publication you will find lots of information on both sides of the story. The challenge in the massage field is that so many schools are not accredited and therefore will not fall under these rules. Non accredited schools have far less accountability. I'm not saying they are bad schools, just that they don't have to follow the same rules as accredited schools.

And I believe there are laws against predatory recruiting. Check the rules for proprietary schools within your state if your school is not accredited. If it is accredited check the standards of the accreditor. Everything can be found online.

Permalink Reply by Sandy Fritz on September 7, 2010 at 1:17pm

Thanks for the links Jan-

Sandy Fritz said:

Jan Schwartz said:

Kelly, There is a lot of information on this site about for profit schools and the newly proposed rules in the Dept. of Ed.
If you search through this free publication you will find lots of information on both sides of the story. The challenge in the massage field is that so many schools are not accredited and therefore will not fall under these rules. Non accredited schools have far less accountability. I'm not saying they are bad schools, just that they don't have to follow the same rules as accredited schools.

And I believe there are laws against predatory recruiting. Check the rules for proprietary schools within your state if your school is not accredited. If it is accredited check the standards of the accreditor. Everything can be found online.

Permalink Reply by Kelly Grounds on September 7, 2010 at 9:35pm

The twisted fact is we (the school) just past the accreditation process with flying colors-no notes or anything. And now that there is 'breathing room' for the next 6 years, the owners are taking full opportunity to cut costs and make more money. I have basically been told to leave students alone--that it is not my job to advise them to drop or change into another program, even though they are failing test after test! After being told this, I am not certain why the owners even have directors! The admissions person gave me this scenerio: If I choose to enter a 26K marathon, it's my right--even though I can't even run 1 mile right now. Who is to say I can't do it. So if student A, who has a D average, wants to become a massage therapist, we have no right to tell them they can't come into the program. We also can't tell them to leave the program if they fail and have to repeat classes (and pay more money).
What can I do to improve the situation--or can I? My choices as I see it are change it (trying and failing), accept it, or leave.

Permalink Reply by Boris Prilutsky on September 7, 2010 at 11:42pm

Dear friends .
I believe will be appropriate to discuss needed qualifications in orde rfor one to be enrolled to massage school as well successfully graduate from the program as well to make successful career.I personally graduated from two professional schools as well completed post-graduation studies and strongly believe that all this memorization of 1000 pages of text book including all this finals ext.is the waste of time and money.most of this knowledge it is absolutely not applicable to the treatment room operation. In my opinion that candidate for potential great graduate/professional is the student who feel the desire to place his hand on human body and to heal. As an educators we supposed to inspire her/him and to show the ways to to results achievements which in parallel will inspire even more love and passion to our occupation. Most likely if from the beginning of program you will over board the students with memorization of anatomy some will drop from the program. And from this students who will drop maybe will drop out great potential to become one of the best in the fields. During my long career I have saw many cases like this.
I believe that will be very healthy to start discussion around Melissa DeFrancesco sentence:"However, some students may have the best tactical skills and will become the most successful therapist but may need help getting through school academically. And vise versa.:"
Best wishes.
Boris

Permalink Reply by Kelly Grounds on September 9, 2010 at 10:14pm

I am with you, Boris and Melissa. I think I may be harping on the academics too much here. Passion is really what I see lacking in my new freshmen class. The students who are passionate usually seek help right away on their weak subjects. It's the ones whose parents are paying for the program, or didn't know what they wanted to do and were talked into the 'fun massage' program by admissions that frustrate and worry me. The students with passion, I am happy to help. I'd rather have passion because I can teach anatomy. But I can't teach passion. That said, those that don't have whatever GPA requirement needed to enter a massage program could go through an interview to plead their case, so to speak. This was the standard set for the music department I chaired in my former life. There are amazing musicians with terrible GPAs. And if they pleaded their case well enough, we would allow them into the program and work with them on the academic weaknesses. We had a high success rate and one of our former 'accepted rejects' in now the successful director of a major symphony.
Massage, to me, is an art and a science. I want the best people in the field. I want to take classes from former students who have created brilliant careers for themselves. What makes me sad about the program I'm in right now is this current class lacks both academics and passion. Oh, and tenacity. If a technique doesn't come instantly, this particular group of students will quit and whine for easier work. Reminds me of the Generation Y presentation.

Boris Prilutsky said:

Dear friends .
I believe will be appropriate to discuss needed qualifications in orde rfor one to be enrolled to massage school as well successfully graduate from the program as well to make successful career.I personally graduated from two professional schools as well completed post-graduation studies and strongly believe that all this memorization of 1000 pages of text book including all this finals ext.is the waste of time and money.most of this knowledge it is absolutely not applicable to the treatment room operation. In my opinion that candidate for potential great graduate/professional is the student who feel the desire to place his hand on human body and to heal. As an educators we supposed to inspire her/him and to show the ways to to results achievements which in parallel will inspire even more love and passion to our occupation. Most likely if from the beginning of program you will over board the students with memorization of anatomy some will drop from the program. And from this students who will drop maybe will drop out great potential to become one of the best in the fields. During my long career I have saw many cases like this.
I believe that will be very healthy to start discussion around Melissa DeFrancesco sentence:"However, some students may have the best tactical skills and will become the most successful therapist but may need help getting through school academically. And vise versa.:"
Best wishes.
Boris

Permalink Reply by Boris Prilutsky on September 10, 2010 at 12:03am

Dear Kelly .
I agree with you that massage therapy is an art. I personally believe that with no passion and love to the art one not only can not be successful but also shouldn't be involved in this business. In my opinion in massage therapy education the most difficult if not impossible is to teach students sense of touch. But in order to provide high standards education we must to help students to develop sense of touch. In order to do this we have find ways to inspire passion and love to this occupation otherwise sense of touch will be not develop. Honestly for you as an musician much easier to find ways to put students in love with massage therapy. Maybe it will be helpful if you will read following chapter from my book.

Dear Reader,
Massage therapy is not a remedy for all diseases. Yet it is so powerful, that for the sake of one's well-being, it cannot be ignored. Please be aware that we cannot rely on "feel good" sensations only. To achieve the best results, understanding concepts and following treatment strategies have to be understood and step-by-step protocols should be followed to the letter. Only in this way, massage therapy methodology will contribute to human health improvement dramatically. The simplicity of massage is learned by discipline, desire, dedication, and acceptance of the mission.
Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, once said, "The doctor must be experienced in many modalities but especially in massage. Massage can cause tight joints to relax and loose ones to become stable." Thousands of years have passed. Today we have much additional scientific data, clinical outcomes and experience regarding the power of massage therapy. This is not limited to the treatment of support and movement systems only.
I hope that with this book I will contribute to your inspiration, passion and love of this wonderful treatment method.


I have had many motivations to write this book. The main one is the desire to share my thirty-five years of clinical experience and more than a quarter century of education. Massage therapy is undeniably one of the most powerful, therapeutic methods of treatment that exists in conventional and alternative medicine. Massage is also the most natural and humane method, because it treats patients, not by intruding their bodies chemically or surgically, thereby causing an array of negative side effects, but simply by placing our hands on another human being.
Massage, as a therapeutic tool, has been known and used since ancient times. The scientific community has given it serious consideration only in the last sixty years. Within this time, scientists have discovered many important factors that link massage with the treatment of multiple diseases. Most of these works are written in a very complex way and a massage practitioner can have a hard time extracting their practical benefits. Thus, although there are many ingenious protocols that allow massage to have a pinpointed affect on many different ailments, the field practitioners often lack this knowledge and usually settle for a "feel good" conveyer belt mentality.
Therefore the purpose of this book is to offer a simple approach to massage therapy. One that keeps in touch with the latest scientific developments, plows through the labyrinths of convoluted information, and gives the field practitioner only the most important and practical guidance in performing scientifically sound protocols in order to achieve results.
I am a very passionate proponent of the simple approach. There is a big difference between people who say that they believe that a simple approach to medical and sports massage is the right one, and people who actually know and implement that approach. Only a simple approach to medical and sports massage will lead to rapid and sustained results.
What is this simple approach and how is it different from other approaches?
Our lives are full of events that are connected by cause and effect. For instance, if we lift and release an object it's going to fall down. Gravity existed a long time before Galileo and Newton described its behavior quantitatively. Millenniums before their time, knowing nothing about gravity beyond its cause and effect relation, military engineers created machines that catapulted rocks over the wall of besieged cities. Today, you can rarely find a person who's not familiar with the force of gravity and Newton's law. Yet to a large degree, the nature of gravity is still a mystery. We understand much more about it now, but there is always one more "why" to which no one has an answer. After all is said and done, gravity is just that. However, it doesn't stop us from counting on gravity to be there for us every time and to use its cause and effect relations to our advantage.
Electro-magnetic force is another example of a natural phenomenon. The magnetic field is produced by the motion of electric charges. Conversely, movement of the magnetic field causes electrical current. The nature of these events is very complex and like gravity, not very well understood. Yet this does not preclude us from generating electricity by rotating magnets on electric stations. Returning to massage, science can explain many things. It cannot explain everything. It can measure and record a detailed cause and effect mapping that guides practitioners in the field. It can tell us what manipulations, and in which sequence, these manipulations need to be administered in order to achieve the desired effect.
As paradoxical as it may sound, in order to achieve sustainable results, a "complete understanding" is not necessary. If, for instance, a client suffers from the negative effects of stress, a massage therapist should have a clear understanding of the abnormalities caused by stress. It is not necessary to understand the problem on a molecular, atomic or subatomic level. However, it is pertinent to understand that stress causes arteries to contract, which result in other negative side effects such as an increased heart rate, a rise in blood pressure, and an increase in blood sugar levels, etc. It is not important to understand the exact triggering mechanism of such contractions, or the neuron chemistry which allows the transfer of such signals from the brain to the arteries. In other words, each problem has to be dealt with on its own level of abstraction. It is more important for a massage therapist to know which of the scientifically developed protocols for stress management to apply and be able to masterfully perform them.
So what are the key ingredients of the Simple Approach? After many years in the field I have come to the conclusion that there are three factors crucial in helping people through massage:
1. A deep comprehension of the physiological effect of massage on the human body. This means to be able to visualize scientific data about the physiology and physiological effects of massage.
2. A clear understanding of pathology, so that a massage therapist can apply the correct protocols in a manner appropriate to a specific pathology. For example, when treating clients who is suffering from Asthma, a therapist has to apply protocols in an intensive and energetic manner, but in cases of bursitis or tendinitis, etc.; a massage therapist has to apply protocols with consideration of a client's lowered threshold of pain.
3. A firm concept of mind and body unity. They are not separate, but are one entity and have to be treated accordingly.
4. Further in the book we will develop these statements in much greater detail.


Why have we chosen to become massage therapists?

In my 27 years of educational experience, I've been involved with more than 7,500 students who went on to follow careers in massage therapy. I am always curious as to why each person chose this occupation and I continuously conduct my own little surveys. Only a small percentage of graduates aspired to use their hands to heal others. In most cases, my students confessed the decision came out of a desire to change careers and earn more money. The first thing that came to their minds was to become a massage therapist. This led me to conclude that all of us who stay in the field have always been, at least on a subconscious level, programmed to become massage therapists. Millions of other people would love to change their careers or make more money, but never cast a thought in the direction of becoming a massage therapist. I believe that all therapists have been chosen by a greater power for a mission to heal others. Therefore, we all have great potential in developing our skills to reach better, rapid and sustained results. Adopting the idea that you became a massage therapist, not accidentally, but by some aspiration coming from above, will greatly benefit you in the days to come.

Permalink Reply by Emmanuel Bistas on September 11, 2010 at 9:19am

It is puzzling to me how how the non-accredited schools are the challenge in the field. Until the accreditations of recent years, the massage therapy education market seemed to be at equilibrium, with supply and demand taking care of things. There were good school and not-so-good schools, just like in any industry. The schools' reputation brought students in more so than any other form of advertising. It was not until the accreditations of recent years, which opened up the door to government (taxpayers') money, that we ended up with massive tuition increases, huge advertising budgets and non-stop commercials on daytime television, huge numbers of students per school, etc. One could argue that it is the accredited schools that contribute to the problem that the proposed regulations are trying to address. I don't mean that accreditation is what caused the problem, but certainly the link of accreditation and Title IV requires some thought.

Does 'accredited' mean better than 'non-accredited'? I think it depends on what metrics one uses.



Jan Schwartz said:

Kelly, There is a lot of information on this site about for profit schools and the newly proposed rules in the Dept. of Ed.
If you search through this free publication you will find lots of information on both sides of the story. The challenge in the massage field is that so many schools are not accredited and therefore will not fall under these rules. Non accredited schools have far less accountability. I'm not saying they are bad schools, just that they don't have to follow the same rules as accredited schools.

And I believe there are laws against predatory recruiting. Check the rules for proprietary schools within your state if your school is not accredited. If it is accredited check the standards of the accreditor. Everything can be found online.

Permalink Reply by Jan Schwartz on September 12, 2010 at 5:55am

A relevant article in the Sunday NYT

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