PAU at a Glance
Palo Alto University (PAU) is a private, nonprofit university founded in 1975, with campuses in Palo Alto and Mountain View, California. It teaches psychology, counseling, social work and behavioral science, including the PAU–Stanford PsyD Consortium with Stanford Medicine.
Accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission continuously since 1986. The doctoral psychology programs are accredited by the American Psychological Association and the master’s counseling programs by CACREP.
See the 1,169
Fall 2025 census
View these figures as tables
Enrollment by program
| Program | Level | Students |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 1,169 |
Age
| Degree level | Median | Middle half | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Doctoral | 29 | 27 to 32 | 23 to 59 |
| Master’s | 32 | 27 to 40 | 23 to 68 |
| Bachelor’s | 38 | 30 to 50 | 21 to 65 |
Gender
| Gender | Doctoral | Master’s | Bachelor’s | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Women | 478 | 436 | 14 | 928 |
| Men | 86 | 123 | 5 | 214 |
| Not reported | 11 | 15 | 1 | 27 |
| Total | 575 | 574 | 20 | 1,169 |
Race and ethnicity
| Category | Students |
|---|---|
| Total | 1,169 |
First generation
| Status | Doctoral | Master’s | Bachelor’s | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First generation | 251 | 380 | 17 | 648 |
| Not first generation | 324 | 194 | 3 | 521 |
On campus and online
| Delivery | Doctoral | Master’s | Bachelor’s | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| On campus | 542 | 75 | 0 | 617 |
| Online | 33 | 499 | 20 | 552 |
These figures describe the students enrolled on September 17, 2025, and are fixed until the next annual count.
Students who have asked that their information not be shared are excluded. Groups of fewer than five students are combined to protect privacy; those students remain in all totals and percentages.
Earlier Students
Everything above describes who is here now. What follows is about earlier entering classes, and what graduates went on to do.
Four in five students return for a second year
81%of those who began in 2024 were still enrolled a year later, down from 88% for the class that entered in 2019.
Most students complete their degree
Students who move into another PAU program are counted separately rather than as leavers. That happens most often in the MS in psychology, where a sixth of the cohort went on to a doctorate here instead of finishing the master’s.
Four teaching clinics, open to the public
4clinics operate under PAU, offering low-cost mental health care to people in the surrounding area. The clinics are also where PAU graduate students do supervised clinical work, so the training and the service are the same activity.
The Clinics @ PAU
Doctoral training ends with an accredited internship
93%of PhD students who applied were placed at an APA-accredited internship site over the last ten years, and 98% of those in the PsyD consortium. The internship year is the last requirement before the doctorate, it is awarded through a national match, and places are not guaranteed.
Most doctoral graduates go on to license
85%of PhD graduates have licensed as psychologists, and 96% of the consortium’s, counting those whose doctorate was conferred between two and ten years ago. The PhD takes a median of 5.9 years to finish and the consortium 4.9. Of PAU candidates who sat the national licensing examination in California during 2025, 85% passed, and 92% passed the state law and ethics examination.
Licensure counts 294 of 344 for the PhD and 240 of 251 for the consortium. It takes supervised postdoctoral hours and a national examination, so recent graduates are excluded by design.
A third of graduates enter the nonprofit sector
4,244people have graduated since 2000, roughly 280 a year recently. Among 2022 to 2024 graduates who reported a destination, nonprofits were the most common destination, ahead of private companies and hospitals.
Continuing education reaches a far wider audience
47,371enrollments on webinars and on-demand courses taken by clinicians already in practice. These carry continuing education credit toward licensure rather than academic credit. The enrollments span 847 courses and account for about 327,000 hours of CE credit, two-thirds of them in forensic psychology. Figures count enrollments rather than individuals.
Much of it is taught with someone else
11organizations co-deliver courses, most of them certifying boards and professional academies. All of them are named here.
Faculty and Staff
Who teaches, and what they publish
Faculty teach across the eight degree programs alongside additional adjunct instructors, who take individual courses while keeping their own clinical practice. 20 faculty hold an h-index of 20 or above, and the doctoral programs are built around supervised research with them.
Publication and citation figures cover the 79 faculty with a matched public research profile rather than every appointment, and dissertation committee service is counted across the full history of the programs.
More than 250 people work here
Two-thirds joined within the last five years. PAU has opened two new programs since 2024. More than 40 staff have been at PAU a decade or longer, and the longest-serving staff member joined 38 years ago. Median service is a little over three years.
A curated pool of practitioners
250+practitioners have taught in the program. PAU recruits and vets the pool, then engages presenters one course at a time, drawing from clinical practice, the courts and the certifying boards.