Updated for 2026

South Carolina Psychologist Continuing Education Requirements

South Carolina psychologists must complete 24 continuing education hours every 2 years to renew their Psychologist license, including 12 hours of sponsored continuing education.

total hours / 2 years

South Carolina Psychologist requirements

Requirement	Notes
Total continuing education	24 hours every 2 years.
Renewal	Biennial cycle: CE due by November 30 of odd years.
Sponsored Continuing Education	12 hours required each cycle.
Approved providers	All credits must be earned within the 24-month licensure period they are reported for — the engine's must_be_within_cycle_window flag enforces the rule's absolute no-carryover provision: "Under no circumstances will a licensed psychologist who earns more than the minimum number of continuing education credits in the twenty-four (24) month licensure period be permitted to carry over the excess credits to the following licensure period" (S.C. Code Regs. § 100-10(C)). No provider pre-approval gate applies: the board neither approves providers nor requires an approved-sponsor percentage — Category A membership is defined structurally by the offering's source class and formality (§ 100-10(B)(1)), Category B needs no sponsor at all (§ 100-10(B)(2)), and "It is the responsibility of the licensed psychologist to confirm completion of each educational experience" (§ 100-10(B)(1)).
Board audit	The board may audit licensees to verify CE compliance.
Late renewal	A late renewal allows a 61-day grace period after expiration and a late fee.

Keeping the proof in order: what to keep for a CE audit, with every state’s retention period and what the audit notice asks for.

Full board policy details

TIER STRUCTURE: South Carolina's lettered categories classify ACTIVITIES by formality — Category A is "formal activities wherein direct contact hours can be exchanged for continuing education credits on a one to one basis" and Category B "usually involves more informal offerings than Category A" (S.C. Code Regs. § 100-10(B)(1)-(2)). At least 12 of the 24 credits must be Category A; all 24 may be Category A; there is no rule requiring credits from more than one category (§ 100-10(B)).
CATEGORY B 12-CREDIT CEILING (AFFIRMATIVE PROVISION, ENFORCED THROUGH THE ENCODED FLOOR): the rule affirmatively limits Category B credit — "a maximum of twelve (12) continuing education credits can be accumulated from Category B offerings" (S.C. Code Regs. § 100-10(B)). The engine enforces this ceiling through the encoded 12-credit Category A floor rather than through a second machine cap: because the total is 24 and at least 12 credits must be Category A, at most 12 non-Category-A credits can ever contribute to the total, and Category B credits beyond 12 can never substitute for the Category A floor the engine enforces — so every engine verdict is identical to one produced by capping Category B directly (a single collective cap spanning the untagged informal-activity credits is not otherwise expressible). The ceiling and the floor are two statements of one constraint.
CATEGORY B ACTIVITIES: "Category B usually involves more informal offerings than Category A and includes, but is not limited to: (a) Peer review or supervision by another licensed psychologist or another mental health professional; (b) Consultation with another licensed psychologist or another mental health professional; (c) Publishing a scholarly work of a psychological nature in a non-refereed publication; (d) Attendance or presentation at professional, educational, or scientific meetings, seminars, workshops, etc. of local, state, regional, or national professional organizations or agencies; or (e) Reading of professional journals and listening to/viewing self-study tapes and courses of a psychological nature" (S.C. Code Regs. § 100-10(B)(2)). Log Category B credits without the sponsored_continuing_education tag; they count toward the 24-credit total within the 12-credit ceiling above.
TEACHING REPEAT RESTRICTION: teaching a graduate course designed for the education of psychologists earns Category A credit only "the first time it is taught" (S.C. Code Regs. § 100-10(B)(1)(d)) — the same course taught again earns no credit. No other repeat-course restriction appears in the rule.
FORMATS: no self-study percentage cap and no live/in-person minimum appear in the rule (S.C. Code Regs. § 100-10). Informal self-directed study — "Reading of professional journals and listening to/viewing self-study tapes and courses of a psychological nature" — is Category B item (e) and so is bounded by the 12-credit Category B ceiling, while formal courses from Category A source classes (including online and home-study offerings by accredited institutions, the APA, APA-approved sponsors, and state/regional psychological associations) carry Category A credit in unlimited quantity. The rule draws no line between live-interactive and asynchronous delivery — Category A membership turns on the offering's source and measurement mechanism (§ 100-10(B)(1)), not the medium. No per-day, per-course, or per-instructor hour caps.
NO REQUIRED TOPICS: the rule mandates no subject-specific hours — no ethics, jurisprudence, suicide-prevention, or cultural-competency minimum appears in S.C. Code Regs. § 100-10 (as amended effective May 24, 2024), and the statute delegates CE content entirely to that regulation (S.C. Code § 40-55-85). Commercial CE-vendor summaries asserting a three-hour ethics requirement do not reflect the codified text; per the research provenance, the codified rule controls.
NO CARRYOVER: "Under no circumstances will a licensed psychologist who earns more than the minimum number of continuing education credits in the twenty-four (24) month licensure period be permitted to carry over the excess credits to the following licensure period" (S.C. Code Regs. § 100-10(C)) — enforced by credit_admissibility.must_be_within_cycle_window.
FIRST RENEWAL: no proration, reduction, or exemption exists for a licensee's first (partial) licensure period — § 100-10(A) imposes the 24-credit minimum on "[e]ach licensed psychologist" per biennial period without a first-renewal carve-out, and § 100-3 contains none either. The standard requirement therefore applies from initial licensure. (The board's site, where any sub-regulatory first-renewal policy would appear, was unreachable during research — flagged for human confirmation.)
LICENSE STATUS RULES: South Carolina creates no inactive or retired license status for psychologists. The renewal rule's only status-adjacent relief is a FEE waiver: "The Board reserves the right to waive biennial renewal fees for psychologists who have retired from active practice or who document cases of extreme hardship" (S.C. Code Regs. § 100-3(D)) — it states no CE exemption. The CE rule's relief valve for non-compliance is individual: "a penalty will be determined by the Board on an individual basis" (§ 100-10(F)). A license not renewed within two months after the deadline is expired, and "[e]xcept under extraordinary circumstances approved by the Board, an expired license will be reinstated only upon successful completion of a new application for licensure" (§ 100-3(C)) — a re-application procedure with no fixed reactivation CE quantum, so no conditional reactivation block is modeled.
OVERLAYS: South Carolina participates in PSYPACT — the Psychology Interjurisdictional Compact was enacted as S.C. Code §§ 40-55-310 through 40-55-440 by 2022 Act No. 159 (H. 3833), § 2.A, effective May 13, 2022. Authority to practice interjurisdictional telepsychology (APIT, on an ASPPB E.Passport) or temporarily in person (TAP, on an IPC) is a mobility overlay on the home-state license renewed through ASPPB/PSYPACT Commission channels; it adds no South Carolina CE hours. South Carolina grants psychologists no prescriptive authority — the practice definition (S.C. Code § 40-55-50) includes no prescribing and no prescription-certificate provision exists in Chapter 55 or Chapter 100.

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South Carolina Psychologist CE: frequently asked questions

How many CE hours do South Carolina Psychologist licensees need?

South Carolina requires 24 continuing education hours every 2 years to renew a Psychologist license. Biennial cycle: CE due by November 30 of odd years.

How often do South Carolina Psychologist licensees renew?

Biennial cycle: CE due by November 30 of odd years.

Are there subject-specific CE requirements for South Carolina Psychologist licensees?

Yes. In addition to ethics, South Carolina requires 12 hours of sponsored continuing education.

Sources & verification

State source: South Carolina board rule
Last verified: August 2026
Ruleset version: 2026.1

Reviewed against the South Carolina board source and refreshed from the compiled ruleset above. Methodology and disclaimer. Compliance data is for guidance only, not legal or board advice. Always confirm requirements with your licensing board before renewing. See something wrong? Report it →

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South Carolinaguides & data

What to keep for a CE audit

What boards ask for in a CE audit, how long each state says to keep certificates, what the notice looks like, and a printable checklist.

South Carolina mental health workforce data

15,770 active providers, or 283.1 per 100,000 residents, ranked 44 of 51. County density map and free CSV downloads.

Other South Carolina CE requirement pages

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