The National Board for Certified Counselors: The Good,the Bad,and the Ugly

The National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC) was a good idea whose time has come and gone. It no longer makes sense to promote the National Certified Counselor (NCC) credential when most states now have counselor licensure. It has yet to be established that the National Counselor Examination (NCE) differentiates between good and bad counselors, nor are there any data that suggest that NCCs are any better counselors than are non NCCs. For probably most of the current 16,020 NCCs, NCC status is redundant and useless: for everyone, it is costly. If NBCC is as great as its proponents would like us to believe, how come only 8% of American Counseling Association (ACA) members are also NCCs? Included are suggestions as to how counselors could better spend the money they would save by not becoming or renewing their certification.