Follow Up Questions Re Barrys "RA" Posting of 10/13

With some considerable effort I have managed to drop my defensiveness regarding the issue(s) raised by Barry in his posting on the subject of US students going exclusively for RA degree programs. I recognize that the question is well asked and it has stimulated some good discussion. Here are my follow up questions on the issue:
1) Does this question pertain only to doctoral degree programs? After all, if doctoral degrees are viewed askance can Masters degrees fare any better? Or BA's?
Are the poor opinions of DL degrees restricted solely to those who occupy the ivory towers of academia or is this a more general opinion, common to all prospective employers?
2) If DL degrees are, in fact, so poorly regarded, then why does there seem to be a gradually increasing number of DL degree programs? Will we all enroll only to discover years later, after having earned our degrees, that they have little or no value in the marketplace? Are these universities merely jumping on the bandwagon in an attempt to make some "easy money" by trading us wothless sheepskins for our hard-earned money?
3) If it is the "non-residency" component of DL degrees that reduce their value, how much "residency" will make it OK? If I fly to Dominguez Hills once per year, meet with my advisor, take in a couple of seminars then fly home, cam I say that I put in my "campus time" and that my Masters is now more legitimate? Where does this line get drawn?
OK, so maybe I haven't dropped all my defensiveness but I think the questions are relevant nonetheless. Opinions on the matters have been expressed but are these just opinions? John Bear says it boils down to "utility and probability." This makes sense but does it mean, for example, that a UNISA PhD may be no more valuable than a trip to a casino?

 

1) Would consistency and continuity not require the same treatment for each level of degree? In truth, the same criteria are not applied to each degree level, e.g., DL undergrad degrees seem much more acceptable than do graduate level degrees.

2) Because, IMO, DL is a methodology which is incrementally (glacially slow in some arenas) being embraced by academe.

3) The issue of "how much residency" is enough has been an often debated theme. Certainly, disciplines such as medicine would require much more of an "internship" than say accounting. I personally do not buy into the thinking that a 20-30 day residency component, in and of itself, would determine either a substantive or less-than-wonderful degree program. Especially if the objectives of the 20-30 day residency could be achieved via other means, e.g., e-mail, fax, Internet, closed circuit TV, phone conferencing, etc. Or maybe one should complete a 2-hour residency, just to say the degree was not 100% DL--you know, grab a Coke, tour the campus, etc.

Russell

 

This is actually not at all far from what is done at times. There are several adult learning bachelor's programs that literally require one day on campus at the beginning of the program, and I seem to remember this being the one residency requirement for CIIS's Ph.D. in humanities with emphasis in transformative learning and change (one hour in Los Angeles), back when the program was available. My major problem with these short residencies (and seminar residencies in general) is that they seem to be academic non sequiturs. I remember several years ago when I almost applied to the Union Institute for a Ph.D. in comparative religious scripture, and one of the things that dissuaded me was that none of the residencies offered within the next academic year looked even remotely relevant to my major, and yet would presumably have shown up on my transcript anyway.

And some folks have done a degree that has no residency requirements, but visited the campus so they can say that it was a low-residency rather than entirely nonresidential program. Steve did this with his TESC B.A., for example, and while I don't know offhand exactly how much time he spent on the TESC campus, I'm pretty sure the residencies were not for-credit.

Back to the Ph.D. question, I think the number one issue is supervision. In our fields, it's not a terribly important thing--you already have a home base facility of your own that's as valid as any university campus when it comes to the field of practical theology, namely your church. But for biochemistry or particle physics, finding suitable research facilities could be interesting.


Cheers,

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Tom Head
www.tomhead.net

co-author, Bears' Guide to the Best Education Degrees by Distance Learning (Ten Speed Press)
co-author, Get Your IT Degree and Get Ahead (Osborne/McGraw-Hill)

 

One day in Los Angeles, rather.


Cheers,

------------------
Tom Head
www.tomhead.net

co-author, Bears' Guide to the Best Education Degrees by Distance Learning (Ten Speed Press)
co-author, Get Your IT Degree and Get Ahead (Osborne/McGraw-Hill)

 

I think that the other thread has been very good at raising issues, all revolving around program choice: RA/non-RA, US/foreign, resident/non-resident, well-known/obscure, and more. But while the thread has been good at raising issues, it has been a little simplistic in discussing some of them.

Does what question pertain only to doctoral degree programs? I think that program choice at all levels is an individual matter. It will involve the student's prospective field, degree level, psychology and preferred learning style, reason for desiring the degree and so on. A choice that is ideal for one student may not be appropriate for another.

You will find acceptance and rejection of distance education everywhere, though the ratio between the two probably varies from place to place.

Acceptance is apparently relatively low among full-time tenured professors addressing DL on the doctoral level. In my opinion, a lot of that is psychological/sociological. They think that you don't *earn* a Ph.D., you *become* a Ph.D., clearly implying that a Ph.D. is a superior sort of person. Having the title is a big part of their own self-image. It's what makes them special. So there is going to be an instinctive reaction against anything that could threaten to make their distinction a little more common.

And acceptance is correspondingly higher in business and industry, where non-academic accomplishments count for a lot more than the letters behind your name, and education is basically a way to learn needed skills and to stay current. I'd guess that acceptance outside academia is highest for people who already have an on-campus degree and who are using DL as continuing education.

I think that most of them exist to serve demand outside the academy. That's why you have 150-200 distance MBA progams, but no distance graduate degrees in many traditional academic subjects.

Depends on what degree it is, and on how you intend to use it in the marketplace, I guess. The situation is changing, and very rapidly. DL is exploding as a continuing education medium. At the degree level, that translates into graduate degrees in professional and job-related subjects. As DL graduate degrees become increasingly common in coming years, and more widely accepted outside the university, it will be harder and harder for the traditionalists to defend the barricades.

The sheepskins aren't worthless. I think that the universities are responding to demand from the public and from the changing economy. It isn't possible any longer to earn a BA at age 21, then announce that you have all the formal education that you will need for the rest of your life. People are having to face the prospect of ongoing lifetime education.

That creates a market, and the universities are moving to fill it in order to generate revenue. Even many of the prestige state and non-profit universities are dipping into DL as (hopefully) profit-making ventures. There is news about these things every day in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

It's unfortunate and ironic that the exact same people that propose to provide this distance education are among the slowest in accepting it. That leads to phenomena like David Noble, who is just the walking, talking examplar of that wider tension within higher education.

I have said before and will say agan: I think that a distance degree program should require whatever on-campus attendance is necessary to meet tangible program requirements.

If you are in an engineering program and need specific hands-on laboratory experience, you will need to attend a university or a remote site capable of supporting the work. A clinical psychology student will need in-person clinical experience with real people. A law student will need to learn how to function in a courtroom.

But if a program simply requires its students to travel thousands of miles for a few weekends or something that are irrelevant to the content of their work, then those unnecessary annoyances should be eliminated.

Residence isn't simply a goal in itself. It needs to be justified. It only has value if it *accomplishes something* that is definable, relevant and valuable.

My post has certainly been my opinion.

While I have no personal experience with UNISA, I trust that their doctorates (whatever they call them) require intellectual work on a par with many residential Ph.D.s. A UNISA doctorate has all the necessary formal recognition.

Whether it will get you the position you want is hard to say. That would depend on what kind of position you seek, what field it is in, what the competition is, who you are and what your other accomplishments have been, who you know and so on.

There is a resistance against distance doctoral education in some quarters of academia though. That's changing, but how rapidly I can't say. That's why I think that a student desiring full-time academic employment should probably still choose an on-campus doctoral program if that's at all possible.

 

On the other side of the spectrum for short residencies the Nova Southeastern seminars and clusters were very course specific. They dealt with course material, assignments, lectures, and sometimes exams. Research work towards the dissertation was supervised and required consistent interaction with the dissertation advisor in order to be successful.

I didn't jump in on the previous thread by Barry but I concur with his position. I have also stated in previous postings that the utility of a U.S. degree in the U.S. is typically better for someone in the U.S. There are obviously exceptions from highly regarded foreign schools (e.g. Oxford, Cambridge, etc.).

However, we can find many permutations here such as the utility of foreign degrees by foreign nationals in the U.S., foreign undergraduate degrees earned by DL for U.S. citizens, foreign graduate degrees and U.S. undergraduate for U.S. citizens, out of state versus in-state degrees, and more.

Overall, I think this topic makes good discussion but I believe the 'utility' of the degree is key. Other factors may include types of jobs and the region of the country we are working in. For instance, a job seeker who has earned a DL degree from the University of North Dakota would possibly fare better working in North Dakota than a degree holder in North Dakota who earned an equivalent DL degree from the University of Phoenix. One reason could easily be that the North Dakota employer is more familiar with UND than UoP.

Likewise, a traditional degree earned at the University of North Dakota who then moves to,lets say, North Carolina, may not fare as well as a North Carolina resident who earned an DL degree from East Carolina University.

I believe the utility of the degree comes down to acceptance factors of being legitimate, accredited, familiarity (pedigree, local hometown universiy, well known), in addition to GPA (typically for new graduates), major, minor, and concentration. Readers can think of other factors but the acceptability of the degree will be dependent on the personal biases of people staffing hiring positions, search committees, acceptance committees, etc. In the U.S. the RA degree typically will open the most doors to have your credentials evaluated by these biased business or academic entities.

John

 

A very good point. There is a school here in Boston, Suffolk University (David Yamada is on the faculty of the Law School). They are totally legitmate, regionally accredited, an all-around good school. They are rated in US News as "Universities-Master's (North), second tier".

That may be the national ranking, but around Boston, Suffolk is sacred ground. It probably has a lot to do with Suffolk Law apparently being the finishing school for MA politicians (given the quality of MA politicians, that's nothing to brag about IMO), but Suffolk's reputation around Boston is way out of whack with its national ranking. It's a "hometown discount" taken to the extreme.


Bruce

 

Does this mean that if I live in Beebe, AK, and have a degree accredited by the Accrediting Commission International (ACI international offices are located in Beebe), that I would be held in high esteem by most Beebe residents?

Russell

 

Not necessarily, Russell, at least partially because Beebe is in AR not AK.

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Bill Gossett

 

I can assure you, having provided much information to the powers-that-be at the Beebe Chamber of Comnmerce a few years back (at their request), you would not. Scheel & Co. (ACI) is a joke, even in the town of Beebe, which is quite hip to his con game.

 

Sorry, Bill, it was 2:20 in the morning.

 

Steve,

Does this mean that one could not go anywhere, with head held high, proud of one's ACI accredited degree? Man, a guy just can't get no respect for his academic accomplishments!

Russell