Social Work Essentials FAQ

The Social Work Essentials Certificate program is $2,000.

No. You would have a Social Work Essentials Certificate. The Social Work Essentials Certificate alone is a non-credit bearing credential.

You will receive the MSW degree only if you proceed into the MSW degree program after you complete the Social Work Essentials certificate courses. Note that a full MSW application is required for MSW program admission consideration.

No. The Social Work Essentials certificate was designed to be completed over a 4 month period (taking 3 classes at a time). It is strongly discouraged for students to take more than 3 classes at a time, unless they are working on the SW Essentials certificate full time. Each course is approximately 8-weeks long. If a student cannot complete their courses in 4 months, they are able to extend their time in the class but they would need to be administratively moved to another section.

This is designed to be a 4 month, cohorted program. You should sign up and pay for all of the courses within the 4 month window. Because the program is designed to be cohorted, and things like peer grading all happen within your cohort window. If you are unable to complete all of your certificate courses within your 4 month cohort window, we can move your remaining courses into the next cohort. Students who need to do this should email [email protected] for assistance.

There is no limit to the number of students who can join the Social Work Essentials Certificate cohort.

All MasterTrack courses were created with universal design principles to be accessible to all learners. More information for Coursera learners with disabilities can be found here. If MT learners need additional support they can email: [email protected].

Yes. Coursera will provide a certificate to learners upon completion of assignments for individual MasterTrack courses. Once a learner has completed all courses for the MasterTrack Certificate and verified their identity with Coursera, the University of Michigan will issue a certificate of completion for the Social Work: Practice, Policy and Research MasterTrack Certificate via email. Certificates will be sent once a month, based on completion of the certificate.

If a learner took the free version of Social Work Practice: Advocating Social Justice and Change and then enrolls in the MasterTrack Certificate, they will need to re-enroll in SWMT 101: Social Work Practice: Advocating Social Justice and Change (the first certificate course) and then the information from their past course completion will pull over into their certificate profile.

All courses must be completed within 2 years of first enrollment of the certificate. If courses are not completed within this timeframe, a learner would need to pay again and begin the courses all over to pursue the certificate.

If a learner took the free version of Social Work Practice: Advocating Social Justice and Change on the Coursera website and then enrolls in the Social Work Essentials Certificate through the U-M School of Social Work, they will need to purchase the the course a part of the Social Work Essential Certificate and fully complete the entire course and it's assignments in order successfully complete the certificate.