I fully agree that there are many dedicated audiologists who care a great deal and do go beyond what has been taught at the university level and I certainly encourage all those who continue to provide excellent care to the hearing impaired population. Having said that, it concerns me that in 2000, the Hearing Journal published a survey which indicated 85% of audiologists did not feel comfortable with what they new about the Central Auditory System and of the subjects to be taught at the University level, most Universities considered the CAS to be the least important subject to teach and when they did, they spent most of their time on children. By far the vast majority of CAPDs are in the elderly population. Understanding the brain itself will help us all.
I had an experience when I was a graduate student that is one of my so called Dr. Phil's Defining Moments. I asked a professor a question on acoustic reflexes outside the classroom. He looked at me and said "You don't need to know that yet". To which I replied "This is my last academic semester, when the hell am I supposed to need to know this?". This response was highly uncharacteristic of me being a terrible introvert with very little self confidence. I had always been accused of asking questions "beyond the scope of the classroom", so I made sure I asked outside of the academic schedule. I was shocked not to get a response that even would have said "You know, that's a good question, why don't you research that for us."
To this day, I have a bristle response when someone tells me that I don't need to know something or that information doesn't apply to audiology, why do you want to read it. Most of my information comes from outside audiology, not because we don't care, it's because most people don't know about it and I'm the only audiologist I know that reads the combination of Cerebral Cortex, PNAS, Behavioral Neuroscience, Psychophysiology, Archives of Neurology, Nature Neuroscience, Brain, Audiology and Neuro-Otology, etc. I never have felt that I am coming anywhere near what I need to know to adequately understand how the brain functions with sound.