Audiology Specialties: Every Career Path Within Audiology

The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines audiologists as the professionals who diagnose, manage and treat patients who have hearing, balance or related problems.

State licensure gates that whole definition, and the specialties begin with where you point it.

Federal job data shows how the splits appear in titles.

O*NET's reported job titles for audiologists (SOC 29-1181) include clinical audiologist, dispensing audiologist, educational audiologist, forensic audiologist, industrial audiologist, pediatric audiologist and staff audiologist.

The professional scope documents set the common base.

ASHA's Scope of Practice in Audiology covers hearing and balance assessment, nonmedical treatment and rehabilitation, including diagnosis, for people of all ages.

The American Academy of Audiology's 2023 scope describes audiologists as independent practitioners who serve as point-of-entry health-care providers for persons with auditory and vestibular disorders.

Licensure is the constant across all of it: BLS reports that all states require audiologists to be licensed, with requirements that vary by state.

The specialty changes the employer, the caseload and sometimes the credential — not the license.

The main career paths:

• Pediatric audiology — hearing assessment, amplification and family counseling for infants and children.
• Educational audiology — audiology delivered inside schools.
• Vestibular audiology — dizziness, balance and the testing behind them.
• Cochlear implant audiology — candidacy and device programming on an implant team.
• Medical audiology — audiology in ENT groups, hospitals and academic medical centers, including intraoperative monitoring.
• Industrial audiology — occupational hearing conservation under OSHA's rule.
• VA and military audiology — hearing care in the federal health system, anchored by the VA.

Focus areas that cut across these settings — tinnitus, auditory processing, forensic and music audiology — are covered later on this page.

For the profession as a whole, including the AuD degree and pay, start with the audiologist career guide.

Pediatric audiologists work with the youngest patients in hearing care: hearing assessment, amplification and family counseling for infants and children.

ASHA's scope adds a duty that starts at diagnosis — upon diagnosis of hearing loss, the audiologist should ensure the child and family are enrolled in an appropriate early intervention program.

The specialty credential here is the American Board of Audiology's Pediatric Audiology Specialty Certification (PASC) — one of two specialty certifications the ABA currently offers alongside ABA Certified and its General Audiology Board Certification.

Eligibility runs on documented pediatric experience: a current audiology license and a master's or doctoral degree in audiology.

The ABA then requires at least 2,000 hours of post-degree paid experience within two years, plus 550 pediatric patient contact hours and 50 pediatric case-management hours over two consecutive years in the past five.

Externship hours do not count toward those totals, and the application takes two professional references.

Recertification is required every three years.

Cost and format are published: application fees are $125 for Academy members and $160 for non-members, with the exam delivered online under live remote proctoring in a two-week window.

Educational audiology keeps the child focus and moves it into schools.

Federal special education law — IDEA, at 34 CFR 300.34 — lists audiology as a related service for children with disabilities, covering identification of hearing loss, determination of its range, nature and degree, habilitation, counseling, hearing-loss prevention and selecting and fitting amplification.

The Educational Audiology Association's scope of practice, approved in August 2019, defines educational audiologists as members of the school multidisciplinary team who deliver hearing services to children — whether they are school employees or contracted to provide onsite services.

The ABA and the EAA also offer a joint credential, the Certificate Holder–Educational Audiology (CH-EdAud), an online self-study course.

It is a certificate, not a board certification.

Both paths have their own guides: pediatric audiology as a career, and the educational audiology guide.

Vestibular audiologists work the balance side of the scope.

BLS counts helping patients with vertigo or other balance problems among audiologists' duties — for example, by demonstrating head-movement or positioning exercises.

The American Academy of Audiology's 2023 scope names the treatments: canalith repositioning for BPPV, gaze stabilization exercises, and adaptation, habituation and substitution training.

The ABA's second specialty certification is the Vestibular Audiology Specialty Certification (VASC).

It requires a current license and a doctoral degree plus three years of post-degree full-time paid experience — or a master's plus ten years — with the externship year ineligible.

It also requires 550 direct vestibular patient contact hours and 50 vestibular case-management hours within three years in the past five, plus two professional references.

Like the PASC, it recertifies every three years.

Medical audiology is an employer label, not a separate license: audiology practiced in medical settings such as ENT groups, hospital audiology departments and academic medical centers.

Intraoperative monitoring is one strand of that work.

ASHA's scope includes measuring and interpreting sensory and motor evoked potentials, EMG and other electrodiagnostic tests for neurophysiologic intraoperative monitoring and cranial nerve assessment.

The Academy's 2023 scope lists the same family of work: neurophysiological monitoring with sensory and motor evoked potentials, nerve conduction, EMG, and intraoperative monitoring of cranial nerve and spinal cord function.

The vestibular audiology and medical audiology guides go deeper on both paths.

Cochlear implant audiologists sit on the implant team.

The Academy's 2023 scope places audiologists on the team for cochlear, middle ear, fully implantable and osseointegrated devices: they determine audiologic candidacy and are principally responsible for device programming.

One Medicare rule shapes the job: the program's exclusion of hearing aids and examinations for prescribing, fitting or changing hearing aids does not apply to cochlear implants, auditory brainstem implants or osseointegrated implants, under 42 CFR 411.15(d)(2).

On credentials, this specialty currently has no exam to sit.

The ABA's Cochlear Implant Specialty Certification (CISC) exam was discontinued in 2018, and the ABA offers reinstatement of lapsed CISC credentials only — its current specialty certification list covers pediatric and vestibular audiology instead.

The cochlear implant audiology guide covers candidacy work, programming and the employer side of implant centers.

Industrial audiologists run hearing conservation inside workplaces.

OSHA's hearing conservation standard, 29 CFR 1910.95(g)(3), requires audiometric tests to be performed by a licensed or certified audiologist, an otolaryngologist or other physician, or a technician certified by CAOHC or who has demonstrated competence.

The same rule requires any testing technician to be responsible to an audiologist, otolaryngologist or physician.

CAOHC's professional supervisor credential, the Certified Professional Supervisor of the Audiometric Monitoring Program (CPS/A), is open only to audiologists and physicians with a current license; other professionals may take the course but not the exam.

CAOHC states the CPS/A is responsible for determining the work-relatedness of a hearing loss for OSHA 300 Log recording.

The VA is the other large, distinct employer.

VA's own audiology program page describes the VA as the largest employer of audiologists in the United States, with nearly 1,400 audiologists, and counts audiology services at more than 650 VA sites of care — including cochlear implant services at over 125 sites.

VA's audiology fact sheet, last updated December 2022, states that all VA audiologists are required to maintain a state license — the federal job builds on the same state credential.

The VA and military audiology guide covers the setting, hiring and pay.

Tinnitus care is a focus area ASHA's scope names directly: tinnitus sits among audiology's assessment areas across the lifespan, alongside auditory processing.

The ABA offers a Certificate Holder–Tinnitus Management credential — an online self-study program of seven modules (1.4 Tier 1 CEUs) for licensed audiologists, first offered in 2018 and to be completed within 18 months.

Like the ABA's other certificate programs, it is a certificate rather than a board certification.

Auditory processing is the other scope-listed focus.

Audiologists who concentrate on auditory processing disorders build that practice within the same state license; the testing protocols and age limits for those evaluations were not part of this page's research.

Forensic audiology appears in federal job data: O*NET lists forensic audiologist among the reported job titles for the audiologist occupation, alongside clinical, dispensing, educational, industrial, pediatric and staff audiologist.

Music audiology — audiologists who focus on musicians' hearing — is a practice concentration built inside the standard license.

The specialty certifications the ABA lists today cover pediatric and vestibular audiology, and the research for this page found no separate national music audiology credential.

None of these four is a separately licensed specialty in the sources this page reviewed; each is a direction an audiologist's caseload takes inside the profession's scope.

Where a focus area has a credential at all, it is the ABA certificate — and certificates, as the last section explains, are voluntary.

The license is the baseline everywhere: BLS reports that all states require audiologists to be licensed, and that license — not a specialty credential — is what authorizes practice.

What a specialty adds is a setting, a caseload and, for two paths, a national certification.

The American Board of Audiology currently lists two specialty certifications: the PASC for pediatric audiology and the VASC for vestibular audiology.

Both recertify every three years, with application fees of $125 for Academy members and $160 for non-members.

The ABA's general ladder sits underneath them.

It describes ABA Certified (ABAC) as an entry-level credential similar to CCC-A, and the General Audiology Board Certification (Board Certified Audiologist, BC-A) as the advanced tier — requiring a doctorate plus five years in clinical practice (three with ABAC) or a master's plus seven years.

GABC fees are $125 to apply plus a $300 exam for Academy members, or $160 and $350 for non-members.

The ABA notes its 2026 beta exam is closed to new applicants, so check its pages for current availability.

The ABA's other programs in the pages this research reviewed are certificates rather than board certifications: the Certificate Holder–Tinnitus Management, Certificate Holder–Audiology Preceptor and Certificate Holder–Educational Audiology self-study courses.

The ABA states that its certificates are voluntary, that US residents need a state audiology license to earn one, and that membership in a professional organization is not required.

Cochlear implant work is the gap: the CISC exam has been discontinued since 2018, so implant audiology has no current ABA exam pathway, and forensic and music audiology have no dedicated credential in the pages this research reviewed.

There, the specialty is defined by the job, not a certificate.

Career information, not licensing, legal, medical or clinical advice. Confirm certification details with the ABA, ASHA or CAOHC, and license requirements with the audiology licensing board in your state.