DETC Doctorate Pilot

I was looking at the Columbia Southern alumni letter and they said that there were 5 schools in the pilot. Does anyone know which 5 schools will be doing the pilot?

Bing

 

According to Mike Lambert of DETC, it is now 3 schools. DETC has not decided yet whether to make an announcement, leaving it to the schools themselves. CSU has made it obvious; the others have not.

There is some PR risk involved--each school must succeed in a thorough evaluative process before offering even the first doctoral degree. If CSU, for example, doesn't cut it--and I'm certainly not implying this--they'd have to pull the degree program. That wouldn't look very good. It could be that the other schools in the pilot--3, 5, or whatever the number becomes--are choosing to wait for the final go-ahead from DETC.

 

It makes sense to wait for all the ducks to be lined up. The doctorate will be a money maker for sure. It's an investment for the schools.

So, you think that the two schools that decided to be part of the pilot looked at it and thought that the reward of a successful program was not enough vs. the risk for failure?

I haven't seen the DETC details for ColSouth but figure that the program will be all distant. Thus, these DETC doctorates would not really have much competition in the RA world what with Touro and NorthCentral being the only ones doing it 100%. Of course, there is UNISA and all others but the costs are high for British schools, and might be higher for Aussie schools(many do not even know upfront regarding whether or not they have to travel to Australia). UNISA is cheap but many cannot figure out how to get started there and they do have more odd names for their doctorates.

IMC, as I recall, had a doctorate. I conversed with a fellow doing his doctorate there...I believe another retired Air Force guy as I recall. He seemed very pleased with it. They were DETC but if anyone thinks UNISA's site is hard to navigate then they never saw IMC's. Is that school still around?

 

IMC is still there, but I don't know if they're offering any degrees. They quietly tucked away the doctorates while still accredited by DETC. (They'd asked DETC to consider them "first professional doctorates"; DETC denied them.) Mysteriously, all three related schools (all under one ownership) withdrew from DETC simultaneously. (IMC, Revans, and the Canadian School of Managment.) I would think degrees awarded by any of these schools (CSM doesn't award degrees, actually) would not come from a school meeting the GAAP criteria.

For awhile, IMC was offering its doctorate with an option to have it reviewed and approved by Southern Cross University, a recognized Australian school. It is unclear what good this would have done (meet GAAP, perhaps?), but this relationship seems to be no more.

All very confusing, most now gone.

 

Aren't there some schools out there doing DBA's that don't have the dissertation? Just a major project? If so, then doesn't that require more of the mix at DETC you are describing...over the PhD that is?

It appears that Columbia Southern is not delving into the PhD but the DBA. Maybe they take that approach...teaching the DBA through coursework over a dissertation/research path. However, maybe DETC spells this out on what their doctorate should be and I might be wrong. At this point, I haven't seen much on it.

I was thinking that one of the Aussie schools I looked at had the DBA where it was by instruction/classes and not dissertation.

Rich Wrote:
Not to be contrary, but I wonder. Conducting doctoral programs is tremendously expensive. Also, conducting doctoral programs requires processes not germane to the typical DETC program. Most DETC programs are based on courses. You sign up, you take, they grade. More complex than the do-it-yourself correspondence courses of old, in most cases, but still the paradigm remains. Doctoral programs require a very different set of activities, from comprehensive examinations to orals to proposal writing (and approving) to dissertation writing to dissertation defenses. I would imagine it would be quite a thing for a DETC-accredited school to take this leap.

 

Dr. Douglas,

Your post got me to thinking...

-Is it really POSSIBLE to line up all the ducks in a new doctoral program when you don't yet have any doctoral students? How can the program be evaluated if it hasn't been running for a while?

-Do you think that an oral defense is actually necessary for these non Ph.D. doctorates? I ask this because I ran across the Australian University system's J.S.D. policies; these state that oral defense is burdensome, inconvenient, expensive and unnecessary for that "professional research" degree.

I completely understand your reservations about the DETC paradigm. The J.D. lends itself to the "take course test and get grade" approach, as does, I suppose, the M.B.A. A dissertation degree is a whole 'nother smoke.

 

DETC schools that will offer the doctorate will require dissertations. No CCU-style DBA's there.

I don't know of your Aussie example, but a couple of RA US schools offer the DBA with alternatives to the traditional dissertation.

 

Yep. I think that's why you see so few schools stepping up. And it tends to show another thing: how inadequate the doctoral programs really are at some of the more popular unaccredited schools. On the one hand, schools like Century and SCUPS quickly reinstated their doctoral programs after failed attempts at DETC accreditation. But on the other, look at the number of schools who were successful with DETC, yet didn't try to implement doctoral programs. They know how hard and expensive it is to do it right.

 

I might as well ask the fundamental question: What are DETC doctorates, exactly? Why would a typical student want to earn one in the first place? What use would he or she have for it afterwards?

Are these things intended to be research degrees, scholarly in nature? Are potential students dreaming of university teaching careers? Or what?

I think that the answers to those kind of questions will have major implications for what these new programs will have to demonstrate in order to gain credibility and acceptance.

 

I believe a DBA with the DETC is not so much geared towards future teaching or research careers. It's more in line with the business professional that wants to pursue a higher education.

My father has a Ph.D in mechanical engineering and was a masters and doctoral professor at the University of New Hampshire (UNH). For all you Ph.D "go getters" it's outstanding that your furthering your education, but beware of becoming over qualified in your field and having diffculities pursuing a career outside of academia. I can't count the amount of times my dad was layed off due to his high demanding salary and higher up executive positions. I've heard many other stories of other Ph.D's out there with similar problems.

As for me, if I stay in law enforcement I may pursue the DBA at Columbia Southern University. I know first hand how well the school is organized and academically challenging. Reputation will come with time...

 

I would look at a DETC doctorate. I have no plans of full-time teaching(lower pay, i hear that many tenure slots are being replaced with lower cost foreigners, publish publish publish mentality, etc). I have taught one MBA class even with just my MBA at a brick and mortar program nearby. I would imagine that a good many doctorates graduating from RA programs don't have plans to teach at a university, or can't get a job teaching either.

Why am I interested in one? 1) Further my knowledge in a subject 2) Contribute knowledge to a field. 3) Further my career aspirations. (in my industry...pharmaceutical... a doctorate is a good thing to have and can increase your pay/promotion opportunities).

St. Augustine is DETC and has two doctoral programs. You can find one of them at http://www.usa.edu/dpt.htm . So then, this is what at least two DETC doctorates look like. Not sure whether they are 100% distance, though.

 

I could see a market for J.S.D.s (for example) in particular policy fields.

A J.S.D. with a background in criminal law could be a very useful resource in a mid to high level policy development position, for instance. An awful lot of money is being channelled into alternative Court programs but no one really knows what works and what does not. (The U.K. is ahead of the U.S. in the research department, BTW)

An alternative would be a J.D./Ph.D. in, say, sociology but the Ph.D. alone tends not to have the practical understanding or experience necessary to make good recommendations to legislators and administrators.

The J.D./Ph.D. combo takes a LONG time to earn. I don't think that the kind of person I'm describing would necessarily HAVE to possess the kind of "original contribution" vision demanded of the pure academic but he WOULD have to have a solid grasp of research technique, to a demonstrated level of independence beyond that required of an M.C.J. or LL.M.

 

I guess it depends on "with whom." For those situations where a DETC-accredited degree is already acceptable, I would suspect these degrees would be fine. But as we know, there are many situations where such degrees don't cut it. I don't see how doctorates from DETC-accredited schools will be any different.

Where are all the people teaching with master's from DETC-accredited schools? They aren't there.

 

it's not that there aren't any detc master's degreed people teaching at RA schools. there are, rich.

here are a few RA places they teach. i found these people in just about 5 minutes of searching.

MARLENE M. PALAZZO, FT Faculty
Seattle Community College
http://webdev.sccd.ctc.edu/people/default.asp?page=central
A.A.S. - Vocational/Technical Education - South Seattle Community College; B.A. - Eastern Washington University;
M.B.A. - California Coast University; Professional Technical Teaching Certificate. (her master's is from a detc school...or maybe even before detc accreditation...full time faculty, too)

Donald E. Vandergriff
Instructor in Military Science
georgetown university
http://www.georgetown.edu/undergrad/bulletin/faculty_v.html
B.A., University of Tennessee;
M.S., American Military University
(master's from detc school)

GURCHIEK, David
Paramedic Instructor
montana state university
http://www.msubillings.edu/catalogs/COT2004-2005/pg111-112.htm
B.S., California Coast University, 1993; M.S., California College for Health Sciences, 2000 (1996)
(both bs and MS from detc schools....BS from pre-detc)

Denise Henry
nichols college
http://www.nichols.edu/12-facu.htm
B.A., Rhode Island College
B.S., Rhode Island College
M.S., California College for Health Sciences
(ms from detc school)

Browning, Janis
lamar state college
http://www.pa.lamar.edu/catalog/189-200.pdf
Instructor of Vocational Nursing B.S., Lamar University;
M.S., California College for Health Sciences
(ms from detc school)

 

He is a ROTC instructor. Some college only require that the officer has an undergraduate degree to take this as an assignment.

Several of the others teach vocational classes where a graduate degree is not required.

 

Would one really need a J.S.D. for this? Wouldn't somebody with a LL.M. or "only" a J.D. combined with a masters degree in an appropriate area have the background to succeed in this arena? Still trying to think of a use for a DETC J.D...

 

You beat me to it, but that's exactly how I was going to respond. I found similar examples, but I thought it would be inferred that I was talking about academic teaching positions requiring the master's. (In the case of ROTC, the school approves/disapproves the officer, but it is the service agency that appoints him/her.)

 

Airtorn,

Sure. But I was thinking that the J.S.D. would have better general research skills and be a more credible applicant for research funding.

 

I asked:

"I might as well ask the fundamental question: What are DETC doctorates, exactly? Why would a typical student want to earn one in the first place? What use would he or she have for it afterwards?"

But what value do doctoral degrees have in industry or government? What can you do with them that you can't do with bachelors or masters degrees?

(I'm not rhetorically suggesting that doctorates have no value. I'm inquiring about whatever it is that gives doctorates their additional value.)

I'm less interested in the accreditor's initials than I am in the degrees themselves.

It seems to me that if a Ph.D. comes from a respected research program, then it doesn't really matter a whole lot what accreditation it has.

The paradigmatic example of that is Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Its new Ph.D. program only has NY Regent's approval at this point, but I expect that CSHL graduates could land jobs anywhere. Why? The institution's 100-year history, its research productivity, the multiple Nobel Prizes, the iconic names in molecular biology that have been associated with it. Stuff like that.

Put another way, if an academic, corporate or governmental employer needs high-level research expertise in molecular genetics, there are some very good reasons to think that CSHL graduates can provide it.

Compare that to DETC doctors. What reasons would prospective employers have to think that the new DETC doctoral programs can provide them with the high-level research expertise that they need? Will graduates have anything to point to besides the accreditor's initials and some mumbo-jumbo about the dept. of education?

I'm less sure.

Perhaps there are situations where doctoral level hiring is completely non-competitive, where doctorates are treated as if they were just interchangeable generic commodities, provided (maybe) that the accreditors' initials are right.

But most doctoral-level hiring that I'm aware of was looking for some very high-level skills and research competence. That's why the employer specified a doctor in the first place, and not just somebody with less rarified education. The fact that a Ph.D. was specified means that educational preparation was of critical importance and implies that it was going to be examined very closely.

I guess that my point is that this whole DETC doctoral thing seems to me to be fundamentally confused. DETC (along with ACICS and some of the others) are trying to move into the research-university arena. But they are approaching that move as if it were just a matter of assigning tonier names to generic commmoditized degrees.

My suggestion to DETC and ACICS is that they should start promoting research productivity and scholarly participation at those schools with doctoral aspirations. DETC schools should create research units. They should start some exciting projects that attract the interest of their RA colleagues.

If they can do that, then the fact that they aren't RA won't matter a whole lot. If they can't do it, then the fact that they are DETC won't matter very much either.

 

I would offer that a DBA from a DETC-accredited school would have similar utility and acceptance to those from schools like UoP, at least as those degrees are used in business.

Bill asks, "But what value do doctoral degrees have in industry or government? What can you do with them that you can't do with bachelors or masters degrees?"

I don't know the answer to that, except that some jobs either require the doctorate or one's career can be enhanced by one. (I'm the latter.)

Again, Bill's concern could also be applied to just about any RA DL program not designed to funnel its graduates into academia. (Which would be almost all of them.)