What this program actually is
OrientationSystemic/relational family therapy taught through live one-way-mirror observation — General Systems, Bowen, Structural, Strategic and Humanistic/Experiential first, then collaborative postmodern and strength-based models
If you searched "Phillips Graduate Institute" and landed here, this is what happened. Clinton E. Phillips and T. David Jansen — both alumni of Paul Popenoe's American Institute of Family Relations — founded the California Family Study Center in 1971. It became Phillips Graduate Institute in 1992 and Phillips Graduate University in 2016, and it trained more than 2,700 family therapists. Its WASC accreditation ran to 30 April 2019, at which point the institution voluntarily withdrew it. On 8 May 2019 Phillips announced that the MFT program would continue under Campbellsville University, a Kentucky Baptist university accredited by SACSCOC, with a new class starting that August pending SACSCOC approval. The pitch was continuity: "the core faculty, which has led the PGI program for decades, is poised to continue the legacy under this partnership," and Dr. José Luis Flores told the press students would "receive a Phillips education with a Campbellsville University degree." Phillips itself now states plainly that it "suspended our in-person degree programs in California" and "transferred the MFT program to our partner university"; Campbellsville's own site says "Phillips Graduate University no longer offers academic programs and is not covered by Campbellsville's accreditation." The old Chatsworth campus on Plummer Street is gone. Classes now meet in a suite at 16830 Ventura Blvd., Encino.
For BBS purposes the answer is clean and it is the single fact most prospective students need: your degree is a Campbellsville University degree, and Campbellsville is accredited by SACSCOC — a regional accreditor recognized by the U.S. Department of Education — which is the accreditation basis the California Board of Behavioral Sciences recognizes for out-of-state institutions. The Los Angeles site is separately approved to operate by California's Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education, and Campbellsville's own accreditation page lists the LA MMFT under "BPPE/California BBS." What it is not is COAMFTE-accredited. Campbellsville does hold COAMFTE accreditation — for its Louisville/Online MMFT, a different program. The Los Angeles MMFT is not covered by it. If COAMFTE matters to you for portability outside California, this program does not give it to you.
The pedagogy survived the transfer largely intact, and it is genuinely unusual. The spine of the first year is not a lecture course but the Case Conference: from the very first term students "observe actual therapy/counseling behind a one-way mirror and participate as co-therapists with the instructor and on reflecting teams," three hours a week on top of the full class day, for two consecutive terms. Very few California programs still put first-semester students behind glass watching live clients. The program runs its own clinic — the David H. Fox Counseling Center, operating as California Family Counseling Center (Cal Fam) — which serves predominantly Latino communities of the San Fernando Valley. Cost is $997 per unit, $59,820 in tuition and $66,495 in total estimated charges for the 60 units. The published outcomes are half a picture: on-time completion was 98% (53 of 54) for the 2022 reporting year and 93% (78 of 84) for 2023, but job placement, licensure examination passage and salary are all reported as "n/a."
See it and hear it
The courses that define it
Every California program teaches law and ethics, assessment and a survey of theories. These are the courses that are not on every list — the ones that tell you what this particular faculty believes therapy is. The quoted text is the catalog’s own; the note underneath each one is mine.
Case Conference: Pragmatics and Human Communication
"Throughout the course, students observe actual therapy/counseling behind a one-way mirror and participate as co-therapists with the instructor and on reflecting teams. Following the session, students participate in discussions with the instructor/school counselor about what has been experienced and observed."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingThis is a first-term course. Most California programs keep students in classrooms for a year before they see a real client; here you are behind the mirror in week one and co-therapying with your instructor. The title's "Pragmatics of Human Communication" is a direct citation of Watzlawick, Beavin and Jackson — the Palo Alto lineage the school was founded out of. It runs as a three-hour weekly evening session on top of the full class day.
Case Conference/Practicum
"Students continue the observational process from first semester with clients/pupils... Observing and participating as co-therapists and reflecting team members with a different client, students will apply their growing knowledge of theory, assessment and diagnosis. Students will begin to explore their personal functioning, that is their awareness of their impact on others."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingThe second half of a full year of live case work with a real, ongoing client seen by the whole class — a different client than term one, deliberately. The explicit turn to "their awareness of their impact on others" makes this a self-of-the-therapist course as much as a clinical one, which is a distinctly relational-school commitment.
Group Dynamics/Practicum
"The course includes both didactic instruction on the theories of Yalom and others, and a 'laboratory' experience of being in a group. Students are encouraged to utilize this experience to enhance their personal and professional growth. Although not therapy, the experience can be therapeutic for those who participate fully."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingA required experiential group laboratory — you are a member of the group, not a student of groups — is rare in California MFT curricula, where group therapy is usually taught didactically. The catalog is careful to say it is "not therapy" while conceding it "can be therapeutic," which is the honest description of a T-group-descended process course.
Family Therapy: Systemic Approaches
"Learning sequentially, students begin with a sensitive study of their own family systems before moving on to therapeutic and counseling applications with other families. The models presented are General Systems Theory, Bowen, Structural, Strategic, and Humanistic/Experiential."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingThe sequencing is the point: your own family of origin is the first case you study, before any client. That is a Bowenian teaching convention that many programs have quietly dropped, and it tells you the program expects personal exposure, not just theory acquisition.
MFT's in Community Mental Health
"Special attention is given to culturally-relevant mental health assessment and treatment, recovery and wellness models, strength-based treatment planning and the reintegration of clients (consumers) in family and social systems. The course will also emphasize professional self-care and examine public service as a professional career for MFT's."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingA required course that frames county public mental health as a career rather than a stopgap on the way to private practice. It fits the program's real placement ecology — the Greater Los Angeles MFT Consortium and LA County DMH stipends — and signals who this program actually trains you to be.
Sexuality and Sex Therapy
"First, in a safe and supportive atmosphere, students will deepen their awareness of their own sexuality, increase their comfort with sexual language, and widen their perspectives on sexual variations. Second, the classes will examine the growing merger and integration of two previously separate fields, sex therapy and relationship therapy."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingOnly one unit, but the first stated purpose is the student's own sexual self-awareness rather than clinical technique — again the experiential house style. Worth knowing before you enroll if that is not what you want from a graduate seminar.
The whole degree, term by term
What you would actually take, in the order you would take it. Sequences change; check the current catalog before you count on any single term.
Lockstep cohort: 60 term units across five consecutive terms including one summer, with one full day of class per week (Saturday or a weekday, 8am–5pm) plus a three-hour weekly Case Conference section in the first two terms. Part-time students extend to six or seven terms. The 2025–26 California-specific catalog gives the program a 104-week minimum. course sequence ↗
60units in total
- MFC 502 Family Therapy: Systemic Approaches (3)
- MFC 503 Developmental Psychology (3)
- MFC 507 Foundations of Psychotherapy and Counseling (3)
- MFC 518 Introduction to Research – I (1)
- MFC 519 Case Conference: Pragmatics and Human Communication (3)
- MFC 504 Diversity and Social Justice in Families, Schools, and Other Systems (2)
- MFC 505 Family Therapy: Evolving Systemic Approaches (3)
- MFC 520 Abnormal Psychology (2)
- MFC 523 Case Conference/Practicum (3)
- MFC 524 Assessment and Treatment in a Developmental Context (2)
- MFC 529 Group Dynamics/Practicum (3)
- MFC 549 Psychological Testing (3)
- MFC 550 MFTs in Community Mental Health (2)
- MFC 600 Fundamentals of Addiction (3)
- MFC 521 Introduction to Research – II (1)
- MFC 528 Couple Therapy (3)
- MFC 531 Applied Therapeutic Methodology: Relational Therapy I (3)
- MFC 532 Sexuality and Sex Therapy (1)
- MFC 533 Practicum – I (2)
- MFC 539 Legal, Ethical, and Professional Issues (3)
- MFC 522 Professional Project (1)
- MFC 534 Applied Therapeutic Methodology: Relational Therapy II (3)
- MFC 535 Practicum – II (2)
- MFC 540 Professional Issues for Marriage and Family Therapists (2)
- MFC 547 Psychopharmacology (3)
How practicum actually works
Californian clinical training runs in two legally distinct stages, and the difference decides what a program can and cannot do for you.
A trainee is a student. You see clients while still enrolled, at a site your program approves, supervised by someone the site provides. This is practicum, and it is the stage a program controls. An associate — registered with the Board after you graduate — is no longer a student, is usually paid, and is working toward the 3,000 hours the license requires. The Board renamed this stage from “intern” to “associate” in 2018, so any page still saying “MFT intern” is quoting something out of date.
Hours you bank as a trainee count toward the 3,000, up to a limit, which is why the size and quality of a program’s placement matters long after graduation: a student who leaves with 1,000 hours starts the associate years a third of the way through them, and one who leaves with the 225-hour minimum starts at the beginning.
Practicum is also where a degree most often stops being on schedule. Coursework runs on a calendar the school controls; placement does not. The questions that matter are therefore all about who owns the problem of finding you a site — and the answer differs enormously between programs on this list.
What happens after the degree →
You apply, with the school’s help
There is an approved-site list and real support, and the seat is still yours to win. Most programs are here and most students manage it. Ask for last year’s numbers rather than the policy: how many students placed on the first round, and how many had to extend.
375 Hours Of Required Practicum Completed At A Phillips-Approved Agency ... Support Securing Clinical Placement Through The Clinical Placement Office ... MFT students receive guidance and hands-on experience through our Clinical Placement Office and affiliated training sites. the school’s own page →
The school runs its own training clinics. California Family Counseling Center (Cal Fam) · Phillips On-Site Counseling Center Owning a clinic and holding a seat in it are different things, so this sits beside the model above rather than replacing it.
Be clear-eyed about who does the work here: the program has real infrastructure but you still apply and interview. Campbellsville names two LMFTs as its placement contacts (Shelly Stee and Bobbi Jankovich) and the MFC 533 catalog description says students are placed "at placement sites approved by the Clinical Placement Directors" and that "the MFT Program at Phillips Education Center has affiliations with a variety of placements, including the David H. Fox Counseling Center" — so there is a maintained affiliate list and an in-house clinic, which is more than most online or low-residency programs offer. But the in-house traineeship at Cal Fam is competitive rather than automatic: it is organized into specialized tracks with roughly eight openings each, and runs a published application, interview and notification cycle. In practice this is a mixed model — the program brings you a vetted list and an in-house option, you compete for the slot and interview for the site. Once placed the commitment is heavy and non-negotiable: 15 to 20 hours a week at the site by year two, on top of a full day of class and a weekly case conference, which is the single biggest reason people go part-time. This is a Los Angeles program placing into Los Angeles agencies; the Greater Los Angeles MFT Consortium and LA County Department of Mental Health stipend history are part of the same placement ecology. source ↗
Will this degree travel
Not COAMFTE accredited
That is not a defect — 66 of the 78 institutions on the Board’s list are in the same position, including most of the Cal States, and their graduates license in California every year.
It becomes a problem if you leave. Several states will not accept a non-COAMFTE degree without remedial coursework, and a few will not accept it at all. If there is any chance you move, check the destination board’s rules before you enroll, not after.
What the Board requires of any qualifying degree →
What it is, on paper
375 required practicum hours; 15+ hrs/week at a clinical placement by Year 2. Approved by CA BBS and BPPE.
What it costs
The figure below is the institution’s own, from its own page, with the year it applies to. Multiply the per-unit rate by the actual unit count and add campus fees before comparing it with anything.
$66,495 total 2026-27 — source
What a month costs to live on while you study →
Getting in
Completion of all 60 units of required courses with an overall GPA of 3.0 or higher source →
The school contradicts itself here
Two different totals appear on the school's own pages: 375 hours in one place, 350 plus 100 in another.
How its graduates did on the Board’s exam
Counting every attempt rather than only first attempts, the figure is 59% across 653 sittings here, against 66% statewide. First attempts are the fairer comparison — counting resits measures how many tries people needed rather than how many passed, and it penalises a school whose graduates keep going.
On the separate California Law and Ethics exam, 79% of this school’s 330 first-time candidates passed, against 80% statewide.
Recorded by the Board as Phillips Graduate Institute. Its list is kept by institution and its names lag: a school that has since renamed appears under the name it had when the candidates sat.
What this number is, and what it is not
It describes candidates, not teaching. In 2022 the Council on Social Work Education removed licensing-exam pass rates from its accreditation standards, saying the data “may not be an equitable measure of program outcomes” — after the social-work exam board’s own analysis found first-time pass rates of 84% for white candidates and 45% for Black candidates. A program that enrolls more career-changers and more students of color will post a lower rate while teaching at least as well. The accrediting body with the most reason to want this metric examined it and stopped using it.
The denominator is not this year’s students. These are people who sat the exam during the window, often several years after graduating and sometimes after the program changed shape or owner.
It is published here because it is a real, official figure that is otherwise almost impossible to find — and it is published on this page only. There is no pass-rate column in the directory, nothing is sorted by it, and no school on this site is ranked against another.
July 2018 - December 2024, pooled (13 semiannual BBS reports) · the Board’s published exam results by school →
What people say about it
Quoted where the wording carries the meaning, linked in every case, opening in a new window. The tags are my reading of each source, not a measurement, and the unflattering ones are here too.
What to ask before you apply
None of these are answered on a program page, and all five change what the degree is actually worth to you.
The single question that separates programs. Ask for a list of current sites, and ask plainly whether the program places you or expects you to find your own. A rural or online student unable to find a site cannot graduate.
The Board publishes this by school, so the program cannot be the only source. Ask anyway, and see whether the answer matches.
Per-unit rates move. Multiply by the actual unit count and add campus fees before comparing anything.
The 500 couples-and-families hours are carved out of the 1,750 clinical ones, and they are the category associates most often finish short on. A program placing students in adult individual settings will not generate them.
Sometimes yes, sometimes with extra units, sometimes only in one delivery format. Get it in writing rather than from a brochure.
What I could not establish
Everything above is sourced. These are the things I looked for and could not establish - take them to admissions, and note how quickly and precisely they answer.
- No COAMFTE accreditation for the Los Angeles MMFT. Campbellsville's COAMFTE accreditation covers only its Louisville/Online MMFT.
- No licensure examination passage rate, job placement rate or salary data has ever been published — the BPPE fact sheet reports "n/a" across the board for both 2022 and 2023.
- The two official documents disagree on required practicum hours: the 2025–26 California-specific catalog says 375 (100 relational + 200 individual + 75 advocacy); the MFC 533/535 course descriptions say 350 direct plus 100 alternative.
- No student reviews, Reddit threads or forum discussion specific to the Campbellsville Los Angeles site could be found. The one Marriage & Family Therapy review on OnlineU (June 2015) predates the 2019 transfer and appears to refer to a Kentucky program.
- Whether the original Phillips faculty are still teaching in 2026 could not be verified. The 2025–26 California-specific catalog names only three instructors (Danielle Lascano, Ed.D., LMFT, Program Director; Bobbi Jankovich, M.A., LMFT; Fereshteh Mazdyasni, M.A., LMFT).
- Current operating details of the David H. Fox Counseling Center / Cal Fam traineeship could only be verified from a page whose posted application cycle dates are from 2018; the number of current trainee slots is unknown.
- No published cohort-size target, no term-by-term class-size figure, and no attrition data beyond the two BPPE fact-sheet years.
Sources for this page (14)
- Phillips MMFT program page, Campbellsville Los Angeles Education Center
- Los Angeles Education Center overview (address, current programs, Phillips status)
- Clinical Training and Placement page
- Phillips MMFT brochure with full five-term course schedule
- California-Specific Catalog Information 2025–2026 (tuition, total charges, practicum hour breakdown, faculty)
- Campbellsville University 2025–2026 Graduate Catalog, MFC course descriptions
- Campbellsville University accreditation page (SACSCOC; COAMFTE listed for Louisville/Online only; BPPE/BBS for Los Angeles)
- BPPE School Performance Fact Sheet, MMFT, 2022–2023
- Phillips Graduate University accreditation statement (WASC withdrawal, program transfer)
- Phillips Graduate Institute press release announcing the Campbellsville partnership, 8 May 2019
- Phillips Graduate University — Wikipedia (founding, name changes, presidents, closure)
- David H. Fox Counseling Center pre-master's traineeship
- MFT Consortium of California / Greater Los Angeles consortium
- California MFT directory entry for Campbellsville