What this program actually is
OrientationPsychodynamic/depth-integrative — psychoanalytic, Jungian and object-relations foundations inside a scholar-practitioner frame, with systemic, CBT and expressive-arts coursework layered on
Start with the question everyone actually has, because the answer changed recently and most of what is written about NDNU online is out of date. NDNU is operating, it is accredited, and the MS in Clinical Psychology / MFT is enrolling in 2026. On 13 February 2026 the WASC Senior College and University Commission took a Reaffirmation action; the university announced it on 23 March 2026 as a six-year reaffirmation, and WSCUC's institution record now reads "Accredited – Reflects the Commission's finding that the institution is in compliance with the Standards," with the next scheduled items an Interim Report in Fall 2027, a Special Visit in Fall 2028 and a full Accreditation Visit in Fall 2031. That is the end of a long stretch of supervision: a Notice of Concern in February 2020, then special visits in February 2022, June 2023 and February 2024. Anything you read — including Wikipedia as of this writing — describing NDNU as accredited "with Notice of Concern" is stale.
The crisis was real and it reshaped the institution. In March 2020, citing ongoing financial problems, declining enrollment and COVID, NDNU suspended new admissions for summer and fall, laid off staff, disbanded athletics and discontinued all undergraduate programs; from 2021 it has been essentially a graduate school (business, education, psychology, plus undergraduate degree-completion). The property story matters too, and it is not finished: a planned sale of the Belmont campus to Stanford collapsed in May 2025, and on 29 September 2025 NDNU completed the sale of the 96.5-acre campus to UC Investments instead. President Beth Martin's statement is the operative fact for anyone enrolling now: "Our ability to remain on campus for up to five years provides us with the time needed to thoughtfully plan for the university's next chapter and new campus location in San Mateo county." If you start in-person at Belmont in 2026 you will almost certainly finish there. If you are choosing on the basis of the campus itself, understand that the campus is a five-year lease-back, not a permanent home.
As a program, the thing that distinguishes NDNU from nearly every other California MFT option is that its center of gravity is psychodynamic rather than systemic. The Clinical Psychology Department is led by Dean Helen Marlo, and its required curriculum includes a three-unit Psychodynamic Psychotherapy course surveying "Freudian, Jungian, Ego Psychology, Object Relations, Humanistic, and Self-Psychology"; the department describes training in "psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis... somatic, sensorimotor, play, sandplay, expressive arts, and group therapy" and states outright that "Personal psychotherapy is strongly recommended to support this transformation." Systemic and CBT coursework is present and BBS-compliant, but it is layered onto a depth foundation rather than the other way round. The degree comes in three sizes — a 37-unit non-licensure MSCP, the 60-unit MSCP/MFT, and a 67-unit MSCP/MFT/LPCC — and the department is explicit that it also trains people toward doctoral study, which is a different ambition from most terminal-master's MFT programs.
The financial picture is the risk that should actually worry you, more than closure. Tuition runs $1,028 per unit for 2025–26, about $61,680 for the 60-unit MFT concentration. College Scorecard's field-of-study data for master's degrees in Clinical, Counseling and Applied Psychology at NDNU shows median federal graduate debt of $81,798 (average $81,066) with a median monthly payment of $930, against median earnings of $66,641 one year out and $85,048 four years out. The earnings are decent for the field. The debt is high, and the program publishes no graduation rate, no licensure rate and no exam pass rate to help you judge how likely you are to reach those earnings.
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.
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
"Classical models of psychoanalysis are surveyed including Freudian, Jungian, Ego Psychology, Object Relations, Humanistic, and Self-Psychology while being integrated into contemporary, Developmental, Relational and evidence-based practice... The psychotherapeutic relationship; conscious and unconscious processes; transference/countertransference; the development of personal qualities."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingA full required course in psychoanalytic theory — with Jung named alongside Freud — is close to unique among California MFT-track programs, where psychodynamic content is usually one week of a survey course. If you want depth training and cannot afford Pacifica or CIIS, this is the practical reason to look at NDNU.
Innovations in Psychotherapy: Wellness, Spirituality, and Advanced Theories
"Topics may include personal growth, consciousness, motivation, affect, meaning, values, dreams, awareness, integrative health, and contemporary approaches in Depth, Integrative, Existential, Humanistic, Psychoanalytic, and Transpersonal Psychology. Focus is placed on theoretical integration, clinical application, and scholarly reflection."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingRequired, not elective. A course whose stated content includes dreams, consciousness and transpersonal psychology tells you the department is willing to put non-empirical traditions on the required list — the thing that separates a depth-oriented program from a generalist one. It can also be repeated as CPY 6150 for pass/fail enrichment.
Clinical Case Seminar I
"Students focus on the personal issues involved in transference and counter-transference in their cases; develop a better sense of the relationship between the development of personal qualities, their sense of self, values, professional behavior, and ethics... explore this opportunity for profound professional growth."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingSix units of case seminar (I and II) run alongside the year of practicum, and the framing is analytic — transference and countertransference first, technique second. Compare with programs where the practicum seminar is essentially case management and paperwork. This is where NDNU's depth commitment actually touches your clinical work.
Psychotherapy Interventions: Expressive Arts Therapy
"Expressive therapy encompasses a range of creative modalities, such as art, music, drama, movement, and play, providing clinicians with powerful tools to enhance the therapeutic process. The course focuses on the development of entry level clinical competence in utilizing expressive modalities."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingOne of two choices for a required slot in the 60-unit MFT concentration (the alternative is Child and Adolescent Psychopathology). NDNU historically ran a well-known art therapy track, and this is the surviving curricular trace of it — a real option for clinicians who want non-verbal modalities and cannot find them elsewhere in a BBS-compliant program.
Positive Psychology and Mindfulness
"A particular emphasis on the personal and professional application of mindfulness and acceptance-based approaches such as Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT)... providing them opportunities to experiment with various positive psychology approaches in their own lives."catalog ↗
Why it is worth noticingRequired in all three MSCP tracks. It is the empirical counterweight to the depth material — MBCT and ACT taught as protocols — and, characteristically for this department, you are expected to run the interventions on yourself first.
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.
There is no published term-by-term sequence. The catalog lists the concentration as a flat set of required courses; students move through part-time or full-time "in loose cohorts," with courses offered in Fall, Spring and two intensive Summer sessions, in late afternoon, evening and weekend slots. Listed here as a single required-coursework block, which is how the 2025–2026 Graduate Catalog presents it. The 60-unit figure is the MSCP/MFT concentration; MSCP/MFT/LPCC is 67 units and a non-licensure MSCP is 37. course sequence ↗
60units in total
- CPY 4216 Psychopathology (3)
- CPY 4221 Cross Cultural Issues (3)
- CPY 4222 Family Systems and Relational Psychotherapy (3)
- CPY 4230 Lifespan Development (3)
- CPY 4235 Human Sexuality (1)
- CPY 4240 Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (3)
- CPY 4245 Professional Ethics and Law (3)
- CPY 4252 Clinical Assessment and Treatment (3)
- CPY 4275 Couples Psychotherapy (3)
- CPY 4150 Psychotherapy Innovations: Wellness, Spirituality, and Advanced Theories (2)
- CPY 4311 Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (3)
- CPY 4420 Clinical Practicum I (3)
- CPY 4422 Clinical Practicum II (3)
- CPY 4430 Clinical Seminar I (3)
- CPY 4432 Clinical Seminar II (3)
- CPY 5200 Group Psychotherapy (3)
- CPY 5205 Neurophysiology and Psychopharmacology (3)
- CPY 5265 Diagnosis and Treatment of Addictions (3)
- CPY 4896 Research Methods (3)
- CPY 4650 Positive Psychology and Mindfulness (3)
- Choose one: CPY 4130 Psychotherapy Interventions: Expressive Arts Therapy (3) OR CPY 4217 Child and Adolescent Psychopathology and Psychotherapy (3)
- Optional: CPY 6992 Supervised Field Experience (1)
- Optional research elective: CPY 4897/4898 Thesis or CPY 4882/4888 Capstone (3+3)
- CPY 4217 Child and Adolescent Psychopathology and Psychotherapy (3)
- CPY 5550 Crisis, Trauma, and Recovery (3)
- CPY 5560 Career Development Theories and Techniques (3)
- Choose one: CPY 4286 Specialized Clinical Topics (1) OR CPY 4145 Death, Dying, and Bereavement (1)
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 →
The school does not say
Nothing on this school’s published pages states who secures your placement. That is not the same as a bad answer - but it is the first question to ask admissions, and the specificity of the reply tells you a great deal. Thirty of the seventy-eight are in this position.
The Clinical Training Program, led by the Director of Clinical Training (DCT), nurtures professional interests. It includes a year of supervised clinical training at a respected community site and a practicum/case seminar sequence. the school’s own page →
You will do the interviewing, but you are not doing the searching alone. NDNU runs a Practicum Training Fair — the catalog lists it as a program distinction: "Practicum Training Fair with numerous, reputable California agencies that offer competitive practicum and internship placements" — and there is a named Director of Clinical Training, described on the program page as "an experienced clinical psychologist [who] works to meet your clinical training needs, including through well established and individualized placements." That is meaningfully more institutional support than a purely online program offers, and the department claims "successful placement of practicum students and graduates has characterized this program since its inception." But read the mechanics: the CPY 6992 description says students "meet with the Director of Clinical Training by appointment after obtaining an approved practicum site," and "a practicum packet must be completed and signed by all parties." You obtain the site; the school vets, approves and documents it. The placements are geographically specific — "community agencies, schools, and hospitals throughout the Bay Area" — which is the practical limit on this program: if you are not in the Bay Area, the network does not reach you. And one line in the catalog is decisive for anyone attracted by the online option: "Clinical Practicum I and II and Clinical Seminar I and II are limited to California residents." You can take the coursework from anywhere the university is authorized; you cannot complete the clinical sequence unless you live in California. 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
What it costs
This program does not publish a tuition figure anywhere I could find it. 43 of the 78 on the Board’s list are the same. That is a fair thing to ask admissions directly, and the speed and specificity of the answer tells you something on its own.
What a month costs to live on while you study →
Getting in
The Graduate Record Examination (GRE) and/or GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test) are not institutional requirements for entrance into NDNU graduate programs. source →
How its graduates did on the Board’s exam
Counting every attempt rather than only first attempts, the figure is 65% across 376 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, 82% of this school’s 246 first-time candidates passed, against 80% statewide.
Recorded by the Board as Notre Dame de Namur University. 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.
- The program’s own site, ms.cp.mft.ndnu.edu, no longer resolves — the host is gone, not merely the page. That is consistent with NDNU’s teach-out, and it means nothing here can be re-checked against the program’s own words. Anything below reflects what the site said while it was up.
- No cohort size, entering class size, graduation rate, licensure rate or exam pass rate is published anywhere by the program or the university.
- No term-by-term course sequence is published; the catalog gives a flat required-course list only.
- The MSCP/MFT is neither COAMFTE- nor CACREP-accredited, so none of the standardized outcome disclosures those accreditors require exist.
- The future campus location in San Mateo County has not been announced, and the terms of the five-year occupancy of Belmont beyond the president's statement are not public.
- No Reddit, Student Doctor Network or GradCafe discussion of the NDNU MFT program could be located; the only student voices found are Niche reviews (4.64/5 across 22 graduate reviews).
- It is not clear how many students take the fully-online option, and since Clinical Practicum I/II and Clinical Seminar I/II are limited to California residents, the practical size of the online cohort is unknown.
- Faculty roster beyond Dean Helen Marlo and the Director of Clinical Training role could not be enumerated from the catalog.
Sources for this page (10)
- NDNU 2025–2026 Graduate General Catalog (School of Psychology, MSCP/MFT requirements, course descriptions, practicum, admissions)
- MS in Clinical Psychology / MFT program site
- NDNU Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT) Degree page
- WSCUC institution record for Notre Dame de Namur University (action dates, review schedule)
- NDNU press release: six-year WSCUC reaccreditation, 23 March 2026
- NDNU announces completed sale of the Belmont campus to UC Investments, 29 September 2025
- Notre Dame de Namur University — Wikipedia (2020 undergraduate discontinuation, athletics, Stanford withdrawal)
- College Scorecard field-of-study data, NDNU (unit ID 120184), Clinical/Counseling and Applied Psychology, master's
- Sentio University review of the NDNU MFT program (tuition per unit, transparency gaps)
- Niche graduate student reviews for NDNU