Serving the Market

It seems that the RA schools are missing an apparently big market demand. This discussion board is loaded with participants who want an affordable doctoral program that can be done mostly at a distance. They want something like the Cal Coast program, but with accreditation. There isn't one.

It seems to me that things are a little backwards. Students can get associate's degrees at a distance with little hassle. These are the least prepared students. Doctoral students, on the other hand, who are the most prepared, have few (every expensive) programs available.

Will things ever change?

Tom Rogers
(who has the following RA degrees ... B.A.,M.A., M.Ed., M.L.S. ... and would like to work on a doctorate without giving up the career and bank account to do so.)

 

I agree with the limited offerings. I've had conversation with people out at Colorado State University in the Mechanical Engineering Department. They run a program for a Doctorate in Industrial Engineering (My discipline). The DL methodology there is video tape of current lectures. The problem I have with the program is the frequency of course cancellations. For the past year none of the courses have run in the IE major. As the fellow in charge of the program told me ... well they are still trying to get the program off the ground and I have to remember, the IE program is an Option in the Mechanical Engineering Department. That is not a comforting feeling with the clock running on your progam for degree completion.
The major benefit of the CSU program was no residency for the dissertation requirement.

A few years back I checked with Union Institute. I could have taken all my coursework at my alma mater Lehigh University and formed my doctoral committe with Lehigh profs since they are the only school in the area that runs IE graduate programs. Why should I pay Lehigh and Union all that money to get a Union degree ?? If I could do the residency, I would have stayed at Lehigh in the first place.

Since my employer does not believe in the need for PhD engineers, I could not get any tuition aid or continuing employement arranged for the residency requirement. This was considered a self improvement program. However they did pay for my M.Eng program.

I just count my blessings ....

 

"Since my employer does not believe in the need for PhD engineers, I could not get any tuition aid or continuing employement arranged for the residency requirement."

I can identify with this. My employers list my job as a master's level position and, therefore, will not provide tuition assistance for doctoral studies. No pay increase is offered for the doctorate either. I can accept that, because they are free to structure the organization as they deem appropriate. It is their organization.

My complaint is with the lack of reasonable opportunities for doctoral studies (with or without employer blessing). I may not want to be in this same job forever. As they say, "Upward and onward, in search of the American dream ... where we are free to pursue our interests to the limits of our abilities." Right now my abilities are limited by time, place, and money. Such limitations are exactly what distance education was designed to eliminate ... or so I thought.

I would like to see some RA universities get brave and recruit a cohort group of students for doctoral studies at a distance, work with the group to design the study program, and try something really new.

Tom

 

There is one potential program but I do not know if it exists on-line. University of Phoenix does offer a Doctorate in Organizational Management. I teach part time with them but I am on-ground and not on-line. And as you noted, this degree would not benefit me with my current employer. My position does not have a job description so any degree is window dressing.

However a Doctorate in an engineering discipline would give my private consulting business a boost. Certification in Manufacturing Engineering and the PE give me all the legal credentials I need to practice, but the Doctorate helps bring in more customers.

 

An idea that I've long held is that a school might find a viable niche pursuing *small* markets by distance education, rather than competing with hundreds of other schools in big markets. (Eventually, adding new MBA programs will reach the point of diminishing returns.)

There are all kinds of humanities subjects that attract passionate scholars but offer few, if any, job prospects. Classics, philosophy or comparative literature come to mind. Assyriology or medieval studies aren't crying out for new Ph.D.s either.

Many conventional universities don't even offer these kind of subjects. Those that do often have small departments and tend to discourage new students because there are so few teaching positions for them to fill after they graduate.

But this is just a death-wish. If these departments only concentrate on educating replacement faculty, they will not be able to justify even their current small enrollments. And if they downsize even further, faculty will lose their jobs and there will be still fewer new positions to fill, hence justifying further downsizing.

Fields will dry up and blow away, while students who are sincerely interested in these things will have nowhere to go.

The alternative is for students with a passion for pursuing intellectual interests to realize that they are going to have to "keep their day job", so to speak. They will have to accept that they will probably never be a tenured professor anywhere and that they probably have to treat their interests as an avocation.

That means that these students won't be able to play the traditional graduate student role of scholar-monk. They can't afford to spend the better part of ten years on a cloistered university campus as some professor's full-time acolyte.

So what is pretty clearly needed are part-time programs that don't require students to quit their jobs and to move to one of the few locations that offer their particular field. Instead, a doctoral program in one of these low-demand fields needs to be able to draw on as large a pool of prospective students as possible, without geographic limitations. Students need to be enabled to follow their interests as a labor of love, by making it as easy as possible to combine advanced study with other existing responsibilities.

That sounds like a prescription for distance education. While a physical university might not be able to justify a doctoral program in Buddhist Madhyamika philosophy, and very few students could possibly justify moving there to study that kind of subject full-time, there might be a pretty decent departmental enrollment scattered all around the planet, if a program could just be brought to them wherever they are, without hassles and at low cost. The internet seems custom designed to fill that role.

So my feeling is that distance doctoral education will quite likely find a niche in those fields in which potential enrollments are small, job prospects few, and where there are few inducements for students to follow the traditional graduate student model in large numbers.

 

Bill,

I like your idea. I am a retired teacher/administrator (public schools) who is currently working a post-retirement job as a library administrator at a community college. I like what I am doing (and it will be years before I am ready to really "retire"), but I would appreciate the opportunity to do doctoral studies as a distance learner. The field of study is not important, as academic librarians are expected to be expert in "something". The doctorate would not help in job advancement in my present position, but it could open doors elsewhere ... bigger college libraries, for example. Now, how do we get the RA universities to hear our voice?

Tom

 

Tom(Rogers),
it might interest you to know that the University of Arizona has a PhD program in information Resources and Library Science. They however require a little time on Campus
check them out at www.sir.arizona.edu

Later,
Timmy.

 

The Nova Southeastern University Ph.D. program in "information science" through the School for Computer and Information Science is also geared towards librarians.

John

 

You can check out the NSU program at:
http://scis.nova.edu/


John

 

Tom - Things may change in time, but I suspect that the folks on this board don't fully comprehend the suspicion that DL doctorates are held in by many in the academic world. For many that sweat through full-time, on campus PhD programs the idea of sitting in an easy chair cruising the web to earn a degree is inherently inferior. Further, I don't think we all see the differences of DL programs with traditional on-ground programs.

In my own area (business), I'd be a fool to believe that a DL DBA or PhD from any of the current programs is the same thing as a 5 year full-time, residential program at a top business school. The label (DM, DBA or PhD) may or may not be the same. The experience is totally different. Working independently on a part-time basis lacks the richness of full-time work. Among other things, most of the DL programs employ adjuncts that teach courses - but don't sit face to face daily with graduate students like their on-campus comrades do. Traditional doctoral programs are labor intensive and rarely make money.

Is there a place for DL programs - yes. For mid-career folks that want to continue their education in fields like business it makes perfect sense. Such folks may use their new found skills in industry or teaching institutions. For many fields that are already overloaded with PhD's (such as English), however, don't look for lots of new programs. The economics don't make sense for the school - and there really isn't a demand for graduates - and the program would be suspect in many people's minds ... Hence, schools don't answer the call from this new "market" as they don't see it to be legitimate.

Thanks - Andy

------------------
Andy Borchers, DBA
NSU (1996)

 

Thanks to you all. I'll look at the suggested programs.

My interest is not only personal, as in working on a doctorate myself. It also is professional. We are getting into distance learning at the RA college where I work, and I'm designated as the person to explore the best ways to deliver resource materials to our distance students.

Tom

 

Andy,

How has your Nova DBA been received/recognized/accepted by your peers and superiors? Have you personally encountered the suspicion/stigma you speak of?

Russell

 

That is true Andy. At least when they know they are DL. As I have related before, two PhD.'s I mentioned the idea of DL doctorates to almost choked at the thought. Both of these were in their 30's (one a Cornell grad and the other an A&M grad). The Cornell grad said "Oh so you basically buy a degree". The Texas Aggie was simply aghast at the thought.

North

 

In a way, I can understand the negative reactions of some people to a DL doctorate (I don't agree, just understand).

With all the jerks running around claiming Ph.D.'s from Columbia State, San Moritz, Palmers Green, and the like, those are the people who give DL a bad name when their time-bombs go off.

I was pleased, however, with the last Good Morning America segment on degree mills. Greg Hunter was sure to point out that there are legitimate DL programs, and don't confuse them with legitimate accredited schools.


Bruce

 

To be blunt, why should I even care? If I were to continue my education at an advanced level, I'd be doing so for my benefit, not theirs.

Earning a distance bachelors degree at TESC is a totally different experience than living in a fraternity house.

Perhaps most schools, or the people that speak for them, do feel that way. But as I've argued above, they are mistaken.

These fields are not overloaded with Ph.D.s. They only appear to be if you assume that the only reason for pursuing advanced education is professional teaching. That creates the self-destructive spiral where professors only exist to train the next generation of professors. But unfortunately, there are going to be far more graduates every year than retirees. So if you downsize a department to the point it is only producing the number of graduates for which there will be jobs, you will have to lay off professors. Which will mean fewer jobs, which will mean further cuts in enrollments... To follow that logic is a deathwish for most of the scholarly fields.

The impasse is broken if you can get your mind around the concept of studying for its own sake. Of actually being interested in your subject. That's not as weird as it sounds. People don't become art history or classical archaeology graduate students because of the tremendous pay and job prospects. It's like being an artist, a poet or a priest; it's a calling.

If graduate programs are restricted to the tiny number of students who have a possibility of landing a teaching post, you are starving these fields of talent while at the same time arrogantly telling the majority of students that they have no place even being interested in these things.

As I have argued, a solution is distance education.

1. It provides a way for individuals with scholarly interests to pursue their interests while simultaneously earning a living. So it fills the student's need.

2. It increases the number of people in these fields who have advanced educations. These people are able to make contributions, even if these contributions will be significantly fewer per-capita than from those involved full-time. So it promotes scholarly activity.

3. It increases the graduate student pool, which increases the number of teaching posts, meaning more jobs, rather than less.

4. And it will probably prove to be far more cost effective for a university to create a DL program in a low-demand subject and recruit world-wide than to support a residential program in the subject with a tiny enrollment. Add in the fact that part-time students with jobs will probably be able to pay fees while the full time on-campus graduate students would be institutionally supported, and you have additional cost efficiencies.

You see, I don't see anything wrong with people like myself following our academic interests as far as we can take them, even if the chances of academic employment are remote. I don't really care if someone wants to sneer at me for that. Plenty of people already look down on me, so if there are any more they can take a number and get in line.

But I do find it bizarre to find professional educators thinking less of prospective students for being interested in their subject.

 

I agree Bruce. Publicity from some of these schools effects the perception of DL. What is somewhat funny is that if people did not know the legit degree was DL there reaction would be different. When you look at the number of schools offering DL these days (eg Jonnie's page) there are some fairly well known schools. That is not to say that an academic is not going to recognize that Walden University or Capella are non brick & mortar schools.

Hopefully, with time the perception will change. I spoke with an Aussie who said DL is taken for granted in his country and perfected because of parts of the population who would not otherwise have access to education.

North

 

I'm starting to doubt that we ever will see widespread acceptance of even RA DL doctorates within traditional academic circles, barring some tectonic attitude changes within higher education.

But I do think we'll start to see more RA DL doctoral offerings that will open doors outside of academe, especially if accreditors become more flexible towards those programs.

DL MBA programs are becoming much more widely accepted in part because employers are recognizing that such approaches are very similar to in-house training programs. (Indeed, Heriot-Watt's program was designed by someone who applied in-house training principles to MBA curriculum design.)

But DL doctoral programs don't have that natural constituency to support them. Residential schools are not going to be hiring droves of DL doctoral holders anytime soon. And because even holders of traditionally-earned doctorates are seen as pioneers of sorts in trying to market their degrees outside of academe, holders of DL doctorates don't have a clear-cut advantage there either.

 

Thats another reason why universities would be smart to create DL doctoral programs in low-demand subjects.

Let me choose a topical academic subject: the Pushtu language. I don't know of a single doctoral program in this subject in the United States. You might be able to find a handful of doctoral programs in South Asian languages that would let you specialize in Pushtu, but probably well under ten. So if you created a distance doctoral program in Pushtu, it would be one of the ten best in the United States, simply by default.

Now remember that some of those South Asian departments might only have one or two specialists in Pushtu, with a handful of graduate students. The new DL program, recruiting faculty and students world-wide, would be able to offer far more resources. So you would probably have the largest department in the country.

Something like that would be impossible to ignore in the small community that is interested in such things. People from the new department would be at all the relevant scholarly meetings and conferences, delivering papers and giving talks. Everyone involved would know them.

This means that regardless of whatever prejudice exists out there against distance education, this new department would quite likely have a good argument for being the best in the United States.

My point is that this same argument could be replicated in any very small field with only a few (if any) doctoral programs nationally.

The situation would be entirely different in a large field like law, with upwards of 180 ABA-accredited on-campus programs. Any new DL program, even in the unlikely event it could win accreditation, would have little chance of competing against the best. It would make such a small splash that it would almost certainly sink without a trace in a sea of disdain.

It's much easier to be a big fish when you're swimming in a small fishbowl.

 

What a remarkable coincidence! I've just enrolled at the University of Burma University College in their DL doctoral program in the Pullfrum language.

 

Burma as in Burma? You are joking? How did you rate/equate the course, content, rigour? There is another Burma......?

Peter French