If someone offered an online PhD in history ...

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by bazonkers, Feb 10, 2009.

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  1. bazonkers

    bazonkers New Member

    I see threads come up every so often about certain schools possibly creating an online PhD in History and the thread always gets a few posts from people saying they would love to see a program like this. I'm guilty of saying this as well.

    I've been reading some of the forums over at chronicle.com where many 4-yr traditional school professors post. There are many posts about how horrible the job market is for traditional PhD graduates in history and all the humanities. They also absolutely HATE the idea of an online PhD and the general consensus is that anyone applying to a 4yr school (and maybe community colleges) for a job with an online PhD immediately is out of consideration. They feel that they sacrificed their life for their degree, why should someone that didn't be able to compete for the same jobs? Right or wrong, that seems to be the opinion. They've even commented on how adjunct jobs would be almost impossible to get as well because an online PhD would not prepare you for in the classroom teaching. Plus, all the out of work traditional PhDs are applying for these adjunct positions.

    My question is for all the people that would like to see AMU etc. start a PhD program. If you are planning on enrolling, what is your end goal? What do you want it for? I realize not everyone wants to teach so I'm curious to hear what others have in mind for using their PhD.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 10, 2009
  2. RoscoeB

    RoscoeB Senior Member

    I'm working on a PhD in Church History. It's primarily a personal goal, something I wanted to do for personal enrichment. Still, I hope to use it for teaching (part-time?) and to market my services as a ghostwriter. I will continue to do academic writing, but I want to include celebrity biographies, maybe one or two each year, text books and a string of how-to guides. I will also participate in seminars, conferences, and market my own workshops.

    I've done some of these things in the past. I would like to think the PhD will enhance my credibility and open a few more doors. If none of this works out, I will still die happy knowing I achieved the goal of earning a doctorate. :)

    Roscoe
     
  3. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    I think that these professors were talking out of their butts (as professors so often do). The fact that only a handful of DL humanities Ph.D. programs exist suggests that their comments were hypothetical. They've never personally encountered a DL history doctor and they've never been involved in hiring one. They were just indicating that they are frustrated that they (or their proteges) aren't able to find work, so they sure as hell don't want to see people sporting what they perceive as easy-quickie degrees getting the jobs.

    I think that in real-life, DL history Ph.D.s will be hired the same way that everyone else is. If hiring is competitive, and particularly if the applicant will be teaching graduate students, the department will probably be looking for somebody with strength in a particular period or historical specialty. They will be interested in the applicant's previous research work, in his or her publications, and they will pay a lot of attention to recoommendations from historians prominent in the profession. They may favor people that they've aleady met at conferences and such.

    I'm guessing that a lot might depend on what the applicant was doing while he or she earned the DL doctorate. If the individual was working full-time in a totally unrelated field while completing an extraordinarily quick part-time doctorate at a school with no academic reputation, then he or she probably won't be competitive.

    But imagine somebody who does the University of Leicester DL Ph.D. in archaeology with a dissertation concerning Anastazi sites, while working for the National Park Service at Chaco Canyon. That graduate might have an edge over a conventional history graduate, if the position is for a specialist on Southwestern Indians or historical preservation or something.

    I think that DL doctorates in subjects like history might be more competitive at the community college level, at least initially. Community colleges often hire instructors with masters degrees, so it's hard to imagine how a DL doctorate in one's teaching subject would be anything but a positive.

    That's why I think that the DETC-accredited Harrison-Middleton D.A. degree will probably find its greatest utility as an add-on degree for community college instructors.

    Teaching-experience is a very legitimate issue. If somebody is being hired to teach online classes, then experience as a DL student might actually be a plus. Perhaps DL doctoral programs could include DL teaching assistantships. Perhaps the DL doctors might find their early niche as DL faculty as DL continues to expand.

    B&M classroom teaching experience is a real weakness with DL programs and DL doctoral programs that aim at preparing teachers will have to find some way of addressing it. Perhaps something like CSUDH's DL certificate in community college teaching could be put in place, arranging for what in effect are long-range teaching assistantships at a local community college or someplace like that.
     
  4. Go_Fishy

    Go_Fishy New Member

    It would say it depends on what your goals are. Living in the US but writing my dissertation for my German (B&M) alma mater, I am doing something like distance learning. I know from first-hand experience at what an immense disadvantage someone is who doesn't have face-to-face access to professors, colleagues, and on-campus jobs. All the immersion that prepares a PhD student for an academic life can't (yet?) be provided through a distance program. Furthermore, on-campus PhD students tend to have on-campus jobs and scholarships, and thus their whole life circles around the university. I, on the other hand, sometimes feel removed from my doctoral work because it is so different from my day job.

    I am not complaining about my situation because I do what I like doing and because the PhD will mark the completion of my studies and personal achievement - I don't want to become a professor (at least not in the next 30 years).
    (Plus of course, my diploma, transcript, and publications will be as good as anyone's...;))

    As an employer, I would consider my needs? Do I want someone who has gone through all the academic experience of a B&M degree? In this case, I would not hire an online PhD (or BA for that matter). Or am I just looking for someone with a ton of knowledge in the given field? In this case, DL or B&M would not matter to me.
     
  5. Kyle

    Kyle New Member

    I would hire an online graduate before I would hire a bricks and motar graduate. Earning a degree through an online setting where the student holds down a full time job and holds together their family is much more an accomplishment then the B&M visiting the bar and partying student; not even close.

    Having done both; the online student has the grit and courage and sacrifice that are miles ahead.

    On the question of the moment; I would use my PHD in history as a museum director.
     
  6. twentyseven

    twentyseven Member

    I would love to teach, and I think that any professor that immediately speaks negatively about distance learning has probably never experienced it. I think it is much more of an accomplishment, like Kyle said, to go to school while doing a billion other things.

    I've always been interested in WWII-period history, particularly the history of Germany under the Reich (and the years slightly preceding it). I am so interested in this field, in fact, that I would almost consider becoming a scholar in the area (this would take years of study, however). To answer your question directly about what I would do with the degree - I would probably teach, and do lots of research (writing books, etc.). If APU/AMU had a Ph.D. in Military History with a direct concentration in WWII studies (or something even more specific, like WWII Germany), I wouldn't know what to do.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 11, 2009
  7. Go_Fishy

    Go_Fishy New Member

    It's commendable if someone manages to get through a PhD program while at the same time having a full-time job and a family. But unfortunately, this person did probably not have the time to attend conferences, gain teaching experience, develop a researcher/teacher personality etc.

    So, why would I want to prefer a DL graduate over a traditional one? Dedication? Time management? I would say *everyone* who makes it through grad school and dissertation has enough of these qualities.

    Getting a PhD is good, and if DL is a valid option, that's good, too. There are many jobs where a PhD is a fine qualification. But if you expect to be anything more than a lecturer at a traditional college, you must be a full-time academic.

    That's exactly what employers, especially universities, don't want to hear... ;)
     
  8. twentyseven

    twentyseven Member

    I do see what you're saying, but at the same time, I've had plenty of professors that have Ph.D.s that they got in person. Those same professors couldn't pour pee out of a boot with the instructions written on the bottom. About half of them were absolutely terrible at time management, too.

    Honestly, I guess the most appropriate thing here is that each person has to be given equal ground to prove themselves. Also, while I do not doubt the boon of conferences, I do not believe that these make or break an individual. One might not get teaching experience or as MUCH research as one might like, but it all really depends on the person.

    From my perspective, if you're getting a Ph.D. (and not something more specific), you're setting yourself up to be an academic. If you don't want to write, and you don't want to research, you probably shouldn't get a Ph.D.

    Overall, though, I do think the points you've made are strong ones. :)

     
  9. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    I agree with that.

    The exception might be if the full-time job was directly related to the subject of the DL degree. I already suggested a DL doctoral student in archaeology with England's University of Leicester whose day-job is at the Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico. Or imagine a part-time remote-site doctoral student from the University of California Davis, with a day-job and physical-location at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

    Strong doctoral programs are research intensive. They take great pains to involve their doctoral students in that activity. The education that they offer isn't just an assigned set of graduate classes and then dissertation writing in isolation. Classes are often secondary to and chosen around the research involvement and dissertations grow organically out of that.

    So it seems to me that the most viable DL graduates are going to be ones that can emulate that full-immersion on-campus research experience at a distance and who can make that fact clear to a skeptical hiring committee. At its best, a DL doctoral degree earned while in the field at a cool remote research site would allow an applicant to fill-in the advanced-degree and the experience lines on their application at once.

    Unfortunately, many DL doctoral programs and many DL doctoral students don't come close to that.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 11, 2009
  10. CalDog

    CalDog New Member

    As noted above, the DL PhD probably did not have the same opportunities "to attend conferences, gain teaching experience, develop a researcher/teacher personality etc."

    And the DL PhD suffers from another serious limitation. In general, DL schools are not noted for their selectivity or prestige. But people in academia are keenly aware of the varying status that different schools have. The faculty and administrators at a B&M school know their place in the pecking order, and they will seek to hire other faculty and administrators who graduated from schools that are more prestigious, or at least equally prestigious.

    Realistically, most schools known for DL have relatively lax admissions standards, and are low on the academic status ladder. An exception might be a DL PhD offered by a school that also has a strong B&M program.

    The competition for tenure-track academic positions is now intense. It's a buyer's market, even at second-tier and third-tier schools. Podunk State U. can now get PhD applicants from top-ranked Ivy U. and Big State U. So they have little incentive to hire the graduate from low-ranked Online U.

    Why buy the generic product, when the luxury brand is on sale for the same price?
     
  11. Tireman 44444

    Tireman 44444 Well-Known Member

    Remember times change. I realize that when I was in graduate school, working on my MA, those in the know said that when the older academics retire, there would be a great market to fill. The older ones stayed on (some teaching while they were emeriti) and the gap never opened. It will one day. Not sure when that will happen. Also, history is still catching up to DL. There, as of this writing, no online PhD in history. One day, that may change. State universities are still in the mode of catching up. I have had one chair of a department tell me ( a Texas school) that no school worth its salt would ever offer a PhD in history online.
     
  12. bazonkers

    bazonkers New Member

    This is a good discussion! Thanks to all those that are participating.
     
  13. CalDog

    CalDog New Member

    No one can predict the future, but there are good reasons to believe that the “golden age” for PhDs in the US is over, and that it isn’t coming back. Ever. It’s a simple matter of supply and demand.

    The demand for PhDs has clearly dropped in recent decades – and this change is probably permanent. Between 1865 and 1970, there was exponential growth in US college enrollments – the student population doubled about every 15 years, again and again and again. There was a tremendous growth market in college education, and there weren’t enough PhDs being minted to keep up. So there was a PhD shortage.

    But exponential growth never goes on forever. In this case, it finally ended in the 1970s. College enrollments are still growing today, but at a far slower rate, consistent with the natural growth of the US population. In contrast, PhD production hasn’t slowed, and there are now more PhDs being minted than there are academic openings for them. So there is now a PhD surplus.

    What can you do with surplus PhDs? Colleges and universities have discovered that they can be hired as low-cost, part-time “adjunct” faculty, without the salaries or benefits traditionally associated with tenure-track positions. For example, most English faculty, even at 4-year schools, are no longer on the tenure-track.

    Online PhD programs are generally viewed negatively in traditional academia, because they are perceived as contributing to both the supply and demand problems. On the supply side, DL universities have had a negative effect, because they have put more PhDs into an already saturated market. On the demand side, DL universities have also had a negative effect, despite their growth in recent years, because they commonly hire PhDs only on a part-time adjunct basis.

    From a traditional academic perspective, DL PhD programs increase the competition for good faculty jobs, while failing to provide good jobs themselves.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 12, 2009
  14. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    Hi Cal - I can't say you're wrong but here's what I'm thinking. We keep hearing about the baby boomers and how they're all approaching retirement. We usually hear this related to all the junk about social security etc. Well, I'm guessing that a lot of the current university faculty are in that number and they're all thinking about retirement. Now at the same time we hear all this junk about how 60 is the new 40 and all that stuff and so maybe these professors won't retire, maybe they'll just keep on professing. It's hard for me to say. Regardless, I'm guessing that some substantial number of tenured university professors will be retiring within the next decade. Who will replace them? My recommendation is that you not let your credentials gather dust. Publish. Teach anything, anywhere. If it's what you want then you need to get ready to launch yourself.
     
  15. CalDog

    CalDog New Member

    The idea that the academic job market will turn around after a forthcoming wave of faculty retirements has been a popular theory since the 1980s. As Tireman 44444 said above:
    This theory was particularly promoted in a 1989 book entitled "Prospects for Faculty in the Arts and Sciences: A Study of Factors Affecting Demand and Supply, 1987 to 2012", by W.G. Bowen and J.A. Sosa. Unfortunately, the predicted turnaround has yet to materialize. The Chronicle of Higher Education published this comment last month:

    Over the past 10-20 years, it has become common practice to eliminate securely-tenured, high-wage professorial positions after they become vacant through retirement. Instead, classes can be taught by adjunct PhDs, who are willing to teach on a part-time basis, for a fraction of a full professor's traditional salary/benefits package. I suspect such people could be readily found right here in degreeinfo's "Online & DL Teaching" forum.

    So in answer to your question "Who will replace them?", the answer, to an uncomfortably large extent, is "Nobody."
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 12, 2009
  16. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    I think that we see a lot of that from the Degreeinfo perspective, because this board and distance-learning in general is heavily tilted towards proprietorial schools and the kind of adult-education vocational programs that even non-profit institutions perceive as potential profit-centers.

    But I don't think that the research institutions are going over to adjuncts in any big way. My 2008 'USNews America's Best Colleges' says that UC Berkeley's faculty is 91% full-time. I'm guessing that many of that remaining 9% are from industry or people with joint appointments at other institutions. The 'national' (doctoral) category was usually above 80% full-time. Moving to the 'masters' schools, SF State came in at 74% full-time. That seemed to be pretty typical. Some of the schools with notably low percentages were City U. in Washington State at 14% and National University in San Diego at 17%. These are DL-heavy places that serve the adult-ed market, emphasizing business and vocational programs.

    Maybe. I've also noticed that when I read professors' comments in the forums where they congregate, a great deal of their dislike for DL (especially doctoral-level DL) is basically labor-issues driven.

    But I'm not sure how realistic their complaints are. I don't really know of any doctoral-level DL at all in the sciences. The humanities (like history) aren't much better served. What DL doctoral programs do exist are heavily clustered in fields like business and education. Clinical psychology gets some attention and there seems to be activity at the conservative end of Protestant theology too.

    So while what the professors say might be true in some cases in some fields, it's pretty spotty.

    I'm not sure that DL programs typically compete for the same students that B&M programs want to attract. DL serves an adult continuing-education market. That implies that if DL didn't exist, there wouldn't be significantly higher enrollment in traditional B&M programs. And that in turn suggests that DL programs aren't taking good jobs away from B&M faculty and turning them into shitty jobs. DL programs are creating new teaching positions that wouldn't have existed otherwise.
     
  17. ebbwvale

    ebbwvale Member

    Some observations.
    The B & M attendees have the networks for success in academia.

    DL students are not in the club. I suspect the teaching stuff is code for that you are not in the club. How many B & M lecturers bore the socks off students?

    DL students have strengths in the workplace due the networks constructed in the real world of application. You can bring real knowledge to the table gained from experience.

    The Doctorate in History may be very useful in a policy area of government. It may also be useful in the military or private sector where there is political dimension to an issue. These instituions generally have links to colleges and universities that may enablea door to open for you.

    Some thoughts
    Many countries do not have the view apparently held in the US about DL degrees. A short stint in one of those at a university or college may make a background for a return to the US with experience. If nothing else, an interesting experience. If you can do this, why not?

    I recommend that the DL student present at a conference. There is often one within striking range and it can be done. I have done this several times. It raises the profile and there is often a peer review process.

    I would also recommend the publication route. Write some articles and send them to peer reviewed journals. You might be surprised. I have been on four occasions. Pretty hard to say your education is incompetent if you pass a peer review test and get published. Universities like published staff.
     
  18. mattbrent

    mattbrent Well-Known Member

    While not exactly history, the University of Florida offers online PhDs in Classical Civilization and Latin and Roman Studies.

    http://web.classics.ufl.edu/graduate/graduatephd.html

    I've had my eye on this for a while. I'm debating on whether I want to go through APU and get a Masters in Ancient History, or just go though UFL for their Masters in Classics first.

    It may be a distance ed program, but UFL is a B&M school, not that it really matters that much anymore.

    -Matt
     
  19. CalDog

    CalDog New Member

    Research institutions have less need to hire poorly-paid adjuncts for part-time teaching assignments, because they can use poorly-paid graduate students for this purpose instead. The use of graduate student TAs is not reflected in the US News statistics. Statistically, UC Berkeley has the same % of full-time faculty as many small liberal arts colleges, yet nobody believes that Berkeley undergrads get the same degree of faculty attention.

    Consider this table from the US Dept. of Education's latest "Digest of Education Statistics."

    Growth in full-time faculty, 1970 - 2005: + 83 %
    Growth in part-time faculty, 1970 - 2005: + 491 %

    % of faculty that are part-time, 1970: 22.1 %
    % of faculty that are part-time, 2005: 47.6 %

    Note also that "full-time" does not necessarily mean "tenure track"; this category also includes full-time, but non-tenured, lecturers and adjuncts. As of 2008, it is likely that a majority of college and university faculty in the US are off the tenure track.

    Yes, I agree. However, the labor issue helps to explain why the traditional academic community has little interest in expanding doctoral-level DL into the sciences or humanities.

    DL programs are creating new teaching jobs, but also low-quality teaching jobs. The concern is that DL programs are leading the way in "lowering the bar", devaluing the PhD, and creating an example for B&M schools to follow.

    A generation ago, it was generally assumed that a college professor with a doctorate received the following:

    - a solid middle-class (or higher) annual salary;
    - three paid months without teaching responsibilities to pursue scholarship;
    - full benefits for the whole family;
    - a good shot at guaranteed lifetime employment.

    Do today's DL doctoral-level teaching jobs include these features ?
     
  20. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    That could be the case but then again, back in the 80's the leading edge of the baby boomers was only 40 years old. It's a bit different now.

    http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-18772999_ITM
     

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