Victoria's tertiary education systems, the social welfare community and the social work profession face, in 1977, the consequences of four years of unplanned and unco-ordinated expansion of resources for professional social work education and para-professional welfare studies. The number of schools of social work quadrupled, and training programmes for para-professional welfare occupations proliferated. Portents of an over-supply of newly qualified social workers prompt this paper, and similar prospects for welfare para-professionals cast dark shadows on those occupations.1 The Commonwealth Minister for Social Security predicts an excess of social workers in Victoria, noting that the situation is similar in the other States throughout Australia.2 Senior staff members of major employing agencies report the ready filling of funded positions for which inexperienced social workers and para-professionals can qualify. When this probability was asserted earlier3 it evoked some indications of concern, but also expressions of disbelief and more marked forms of opposition.