Okay – questions… 1) If I have a PhD in Applied Computer Science from a DL institution, and I have great career experience, e.g. Founder and CEO of a software firm with 6 mil revenue. How hard would it be to get a job as a professor at a non-DL 4 year college? 2) How much weight is put on career experience when applying for a professor position? 3)What type of salary? Thanks - I doubt anyone can answer this with authority - so guesses and comments are welcome.
Hello Ek, This response is going to sound like a duck and dodge maneuver - however: 1) is your degree RA? 2) A lot of weight - depends is your institution is a liberal arts school or a technical (computer) school 3) Salaries vary - YOU WILL MAKE TONS MORE in private industry - that is not much of a guess Good luck!! peACE, ACE
I guess you have the PhD from NCU in Applied Computer Science. If your goal is to teach at a low tier college in undergraduate programs, you are looking at 60K a year, your PhD from NCU would be a good fit for Business Schools looking for Computer Information Systems Professors. I think you can easily get a job in institutions like Devry, AUI and so. If you want to teach at a higher tier University with graduate school, you will be required to have an excellent research record. This can be quite difficult to achieve with a part-time DL PhD since most of the full time PhD students have at least 2 or 3 publications before graduation. However, salaries are higher at these type of institutions and you are looking at 80K to start. Also, the fact that NCU is not AACSB will affect you for some jobs (Assuming your degree is from NCU and assuming that you will be applying to business schools). Other possibility is to apply to Information Systems faculties that are not in business schools so the lack of AACSB would not be such an issue.
Beside what has already been mentioned, it depends on if you want to teach as an adjunct or a full time teaching position. With your background, especially if the PhD is RA, you should be able to teach as an adjunct if there are openings. Most colleges rely on adjuncts to teach almost 50% of their courses. Salaries vary all across the country and for adjuncts they are not good in most places.
Thanks, hopefully I will get my PhD from NCU. Don't have it yet - and a lot of work to get there . Thanks for the good info. Maybe I can teach one class at the local college - will that fly with a MBA alone?
It depends on the field. The problem that MBAs are a dime a dozen nowadays and most of the schools require a PhD even just to be an adjunct. I would say that if you have a CPA, CFA or similar business designtation, the MBA should be enough. Also it depends on the area, it is not the same if you live in Montana or if you live in LA.
Doesn't work experience count for anything? I started, ran, and sold a number of successful companies...
With your current degrees and experience, you could teach as an adjunct for a 4-year college/university or as a full-time faculty at a community college. This would, of course, depend on your location and the availability of positions at your local college. NCU currently does not have a track record of graduates serving as full-time faculty at higher ed institutions, but NCU is pretty new, so that may change in the future. Maybe you will be the trailblazer. Tony Pina Faculty, Cal State U. San Bernardino
I think you will bring in a great experience and background to any institution that wants your service. You should be better prepared and much sought after than those whose only experience is abstract classroom only. This is why schools like Harvard and the likes are probably much ahead than most schools. The ex-governor of Minnesota now teaches at Harvard. When I lived in Boston area few years ago, a popular film maker was hired by Harvard to teach for a year or so. I can go on with examples. These are people that do not have Ivy League degrees but they were hired for their experience. The fact is AACSB and the likes accreditation are not so important as some would want you to believe. There are other issues that will trump AACSB and schools you earned your degrees. You have those qualities already. I say this because many of the things I read on this board I have not experienced personally or from close friends or family members. True, there are some schools that may say they want AASCB graduates as professors (these are more of support for their professional body than academic superiority) but there are many more schools that will ask for accredited school graduate (including AACSB) degrees only. Unless a professional accreditation leads to some sort of certifications or registration it is virtually meaningless in the work place and in many schools too. Even in some rare instances where employers may require AACSB (they are very rare to be statistically significant) solid experience and good work history such as yours will trump such requirements. Good luck.
Professional experience is normally taken into account by hiring committes. However, for business instructors it is almost a must and you will be expected to have a good 10 years of experience before teaching business courses. So it is not really a differentiator but a "must" for business schools. However, if your experience was as a CEO or VP for a top fortune 500 company, you would expect to be hired as an instructor at a top business school even if your PhD comes from a low tier university. As Tony said, not many PhDs from NCU are teaching full time but I found this one so it seems to be possible at least. http://www.mountainstate.edu/majors/onlinecatalogs/graduate/trustees/default.aspx I also found some NCU PhDs teaching at Devry. However, Devry normally hires people at the master's level for computer courses since their salaries are not that high. I would say that NCU could be a good dressing for those jobs that require a Master's as a "must" and a PhD as "a nice to have".
Thank you for finding this. I also notice that another person at this school is ABD at Touro. As far as an NCU PhD being "dressing" for a position that requires a masters, I would say that this is good advice. This would be an advisable route for those teaching at the community college level. At my local community college, a faculty member with a PhD would start out earning as much or more than an assistant professor at the local state university where I teach. Tony
Although not many PhDs from Touro, or NCU are working as full time faculty members. You can find many PhDs from Nova or Argosy teaching full time at the University Level. Would you say that Nova or Argosy degrees are superior that the ones from NCU?
No, not necessarily. You must keep in mind that Nova has been accredited for over thirty years and University of Sarasota and the American Schools of Professional Psychology (the precursors to Argosy) have been around for about as long. TUI and NCU have been around for a relatively short time. In 2001, Nova awarded 496 doctorates and Argosy-Sarasota awarded 118. I have no idea how many doctorates Touro University International and North Central award (they were not included in my reference book), but I would imagine that it is far less. Incidentally, Walden awarded 97 doctorates in 2001. Most of the folks that I know with Nova and Argosy degrees are K-12 administrators, but it should not be surprising to find Nova and Argosy grads among college/university faculty members. I predict that in the coming years we will likely see an increase of Capella, Walden, Touro and NCU alumni among the ranks of faculty. Tony Pina Faculty, Cal State U. San Bernardino
Last year there was a Walden graduate on the full time faculty of John Hopkins University. I have met a Walden graduate on the full time faculty of National Defense University, Washington, DC and I have also met a Walden graduate on the staff of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a premier world class public health institution. These are fine institutions and are some of the reasons I do not buy into and have never bought into all the tier ratings of schools. Once you have earned a doctorate from accredited institution you basically can do anything with it. Can you end up at Harvard? Of course yes. There are those with lesser degrees that end up teaching there. Suppose with a Walden or similar institutions degree you end up as a cabinet or sub cabinet position in the future, upon leaving office, the likes of Harvard will woo you into their institutions. It happens every day. Once you are good and have an accredited degree, I see no limitation to its utility. Touro and NCU are relatively new institutions. With time their graduates will be all over the place like Capella and Walden. I have seen several Capella graduates listed in college catalogues across the country. The same goes with Union, NOVA and so on.
