University of Redlands

What this program actually is

OrientationGeneralist clinical mental health counseling (LPCC-shaped) with an optional systemic layer — the specialization's own branding, ‘Thinking Systemically’, is the closest thing to a stated theoretical commitment

The base degree here is not an MFT degree and Redlands does not pretend otherwise. The catalog opens: "The 60-unit Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling (CMHC) prepares students for licensure as Professional Clinical Counselors (LPCC) in the state of California." That is the LPCC shape — CACREP-style core, career development, assessment, research, a counseling-identity spine — and the MFT specialization is bolted onto it. The arithmetic is unusually clean and unusually well published, which is worth crediting: the Fall 2026 pathway grid ends with a line reading "60-units: Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling (CMHC) / +6-units: Specialization / Total: 66-units." So the MFT specialization costs six extra units, not twelve — twelve is the specialization's advertised size, but half of it (CMHC 630 Theory & Practice in Family Counseling and CMHC 631 Couples & Relationship Counseling) is already inside the 60-unit core that every CMHC student takes. The 2023 handbook says it plainly: "Course work includes 6-units taken as part of the 60-unit MA and 6 additional units offered in an online format for a total of 66 Units to earn the MA CMHC with MFT Specialization." The genuinely additional pieces are CMHC 632 (3 units) and three one-unit courses from the ‘Thinking Systemically Seminar Series’ — MFTS 700 Conflict Resolution, MFTS 701 Families & Violence, MFTS 702 Families & Gender.

Dual eligibility is the actual product. The program page states that MFT-specialization graduates can pursue "licensure as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT), in addition to licensure as a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC)," and the 2025 handbook is more explicit still: "CMHC graduates meet the Board of Behavioral Sciences requirements leading toward California licensure as Professional Clinical Counselors (PCC), Marriage and Family Therapists (MFT), or they may pursue dual licensure." For six units and a set of relational client hours, that is one of the cheaper routes to two California licenses on offer — the tuition delta at the 2026–27 rate is $5,592. What you trade for it is systemic depth: the whole family-and-couples content of this degree is three three-unit courses and three one-unit seminars, against a program built around individual clinical counseling. Two of the four named faculty hold PhDs in Marriage and Family Therapy from Loma Linda, and the program coordinator, Janee Both Gragg, is dually licensed LPCC and LMFT — so the systemic expertise is real, it is just not the organizing principle of the curriculum.

Two structural facts matter more than the brochure. First, size: the handbook lists "four full and part-time faculty and several adjunct (i.e., part-time) faculty" in the whole Department of Counseling and Human Services, which also runs the School Counseling program and a China-based Counseling and Psychotherapy master's — and CMHC students "are likely to take classes with students in the School counseling program." Second, gatekeeping is formalized and visible in a way most programs keep quiet. Faculty "convene to formally evaluate students twice each academic year (Fall and Summer)" on a published 0–3 concern scale, where 3 means "Student's pattern of performance raises significant questions about his/her ability to succeed in the program" and triggers a referral to the Student Professional Development Committee. Failing the CPCE (EDUC 699, taken for zero units in the second spring) is one of seven listed triggers. If you want to know in advance what will get you remediated, Redlands has actually told you.

The program’s own page →

See it and hear it

Program overview

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.

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.

Cohort-based and lockstep, three 14-week semesters a year (Fall, Spring, Summer) with one-to-three week breaks between. Two-year and three-year pathways are published and "the pathways provided are the only ways in which the program guarantees completion in the timeline listed." First-year load is deliberately heavier: "students take more academic units during their first year than during their second to accommodate the time demands of being in practicum, which is approximately 15-20 hours per week." Sequence below is the Fall 2026 two-year general track with the MFT specialization courses marked. course sequence ↗

60 for the base MA; 66 with the Marriage and Family Therapy specialization (+6 units)units in total

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 →

Practicum is the whole of the final year and finding the site is squarely on you: "Candidates are responsible for identifying and confirming their own practicum site and Site Supervisor for each semester enrolled in practicum." The program does scaffold the search — it hosts a Practicum Fair each spring so students can "meet supervisors and staff from many of our partner training sites," and it publishes an Active Partnership List of vetted sites — but if you want a site not already on that list you must file a Partnership Interest Form "at least 3 months before the anticipated start of the practicum placement," because every partnership needs a Memorandum of Understanding "often subject to legal review," and all new partnerships must be in place before Fall self-registration. The eligibility rules are restrictive and worth knowing early: the site "may not be a private practice setting," "may not be a for-profit practice setting," must deliver California-based services, must have a qualified supervisor working on-site, and must let you audio- or video-record your work both for site supervision and for use in the CMHC 699 seminar. Practicum at your own workplace is "very unusual and is discouraged" and requires a formal departmental appeal. The commitment is "an average of 15–20 hours per week, inclusive of supervision time," and supervision runs at BBS ratio — "One hour of supervision must be provided for every 5 hours of client contact," where an hour means one hour individual face-to-face or two hours in a group of no more than eight, in segments of no less than one continuous hour — carried by a site supervisor who has held an appropriate California license for at least two years, plus a university CMHC 699 instructor who provides "group and individual supervision" and evaluates you alongside the site. Before you can start you need a Practicum Eligibility Form approved and professional liability insurance at $1,000,000 per incident / $3,000,000 aggregate. Hours are logged in Etrieve and must be site-supervisor-approved each term to pass the class; if the 450 hours are not done in three semesters you register for CMHC 699D and keep going. source ↗

Will this degree travel

What the Board requires of any qualifying degree →

What it is, on paper

LPCC is the base outcome; the MFT specialization adds LMFT eligibility

The program’s own page →

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.

$932 a unit 2026-27 — source

What a month costs to live on while you study →

Getting in

Evidence of a 3.0 undergraduate GPA or an approved petition source →

admissions page ↗

What people say about it

Nothing credible was found. Searched by every name variant across Reddit, Student Doctor Network and The GradCafe. Silence is not a verdict — small programs generate little discussion — but a missing section should not read as an endorsement, so it says so.

Threads about the decision itself, rather than about one school →

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.

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.

• Redlands publishes no public course descriptions. The catalog runs on Coursedog and its course records are behind an authenticated API; the ‘Requirements’ tab of the MA.CMHC program page returns no course list to a plain fetch, and the Armacost Library research guides for CMHC courses carry only titles. Everything in this file about individual courses comes from the pathway grids and handbooks, which give code, title, units and term but no content.
• The relational-hour requirement for the MFT specialization is stated two incompatible ways in two current official documents: "200 additional face to face hours working with couples and families" (university catalog and both pathway PDFs) versus "A minimum of 40 of the direct client contact hours must be relational hours" (2025–2026 CMHC Practicum Handbook). This is the single most important unresolved fact for an MFT applicant and it should be confirmed with the program in writing.
• Whether the MFT specialization can be declared after matriculation is not documented. Mechanically the six extra units fall in the second spring and second summer and the 2023 handbook says they are delivered online, which suggests late entry is possible — but the relational client hours have to be accrued during the Year-2 practicum, which begins the preceding fall, so the practical deadline is before practicum starts. No published policy states this.
• Which campuses offer CMHC. The university currently lists four locations — Redlands (main), Los Angeles/Woodbury, San Francisco Bay Area/San Anselmo, and a Riverside regional campus at 3610 Central Ave described as "Home to the School of Education graduate programs." The CMHC program page gives only the Redlands campus address (University Hall North, 1200 E. Colton Ave.) and lists format as On Campus. Whether the CMHC cohort also runs at Riverside could not be confirmed from any published source. Older Redlands regional campuses (Rancho Cucamonga, San Diego, Temecula, South Coast Metro) no longer appear on the university's campus-locations page at all.
• Class meeting days and times, and whether the program is evening-scheduled for working students — not published.
• Cohort size and admit numbers — not published.
• CACREP status. No CACREP accreditation is claimed anywhere in the catalog, the program page or the handbooks; two faculty hold CACREP-accredited doctorates, which is a different thing. Treat the program as non-CACREP unless the program says otherwise.
• No credible student discussion of this program was found on Reddit, Student Doctor Network or GradCafe.
• The Fall 2026 pathway relabels CMHC 632 as ‘Adv Human Development’ while the handbooks call it ‘Advanced Child & Adolescent Development and Intervention’; only one course number exists, so this is a labeling inconsistency rather than two courses.