My Mini-Poll: 5 B&M Professors Say "Little or No Stigma on DL Doctorates"

I'm currently attending summer intensive classes in-person at Liberty University and I have recently spoken with 2 university administrators from schools other than Liberty, two Liberty professors and one professor from another school. I have been actively poling every professor and administrator I can find about their opinions of DL doctorates.

While I don't try to pass this poll off as scientific or representative of academia on the whole, the results of my mini poll were encouraging. The first professor I asked said "What stigma?". Even though that was a bit overly optimistic, all four others expressed that they felt strongly that the field was opening up for DL doctorate holders and that their respective schools would consider DL doctors for tenure track positions, given doctorates from good online schools and impressive vitae. This is information from three solid B&M schools; two were non-profit and one was for-profit.

PS. If anyone wants to know about the summer intensive program at Liberty, PM me.

 

Curious. How many of those that you polled have a DL doctorate? How many of the LU faculty you polled have an LU doctorate?

 

One is an assistant professor and holds a DL doctorate. The others I don't know about.

 

I'm curious because LU has a high number of graduate faculty with DL doctorates, especially from LU itself. I would imagine that that would skew your poll somewhat.

 

Actually, I'm told that they frown upon hiring their own graduates. I know the legal dept. there uses their graduates, but I'm told that they don't hire many other LU graduates. That's a general practice at most universities.

 

Currently, the sector in which DL doctorates have their lowest acceptance is among traditional brick & mortar universities for full-time tenure-track faculty positions. Having said that, their is a much higher acceptance of DL doctorates for already employed faculty. So, a DL doctorate is less useful for those looking for a new faculty position, but useful for those looking for promotion & tenure. Acceptance of DL doctorates is higher for administrative positions, community college faculty and K-12.

 

"Online Education Accepted as Quality Learning Method
60% of employers polled believe that online education is as good or better than campus-based programs
62% of academic leaders believe that online education quality is equal to or superior to face-to-face instruction" Accredited UMass Online Education - UMassOnline

This was referred to me by a friend who is in the Master's program at UMASS.

 

Most accrediting bodies have a percentage of home-grown faculty that a university can employ; not sure what that percentage is.

 

@SurfDoctor:
As a former staff and faculty member at LU and a current PhD candidate (ABD), I can state that (at least in the graduate programs in which I have had contact) this is not the case. This includes online positions in particular but even residential faculty and administration. I don't have data but I can't imagine a school having a higher percentage of administration and faculty that are "home-grown."

LU very actively recruites their high school graduates to attend college; their college graduates to attend graduate school; their masters graduates to start PhDs; their PhDs to join the faculty.

@PsyDoc:
A few years ago, I was in a meeting (I was on staff at the time) and an LU department head (who is no longer a department head) mentioned that they could no longer hire "home-grown" faculty. But shortly thereafter, a graduate assistant who defended his dissertation was promoted to full-time residential faculty.

I'm not being critical of this necessarily; just noting that your poll may be skewed by this LU-cenric dynamic.

 

Actually, none of the regional accrediting agencies impose any limitations on schools regarding whether or how many of their own alumni they can hire. I do not know if there are any programmatic accrediting agencies that have this restriction, but the business (AACSB, IACBE, ACBSP), education (NCATE), technology (ABET) and nursing (NLN) do not.
The decision whether or not to hire one's own graduates is left up to the institution. Many of the top universities actually have a large number of their own graduates that teach for them. Take a look at how many Harvard professors have their terminal degrees from Harvard.

 

Like I said before, they tell me they frown upon it now. That does not mean it does not happen on occasion.

I just watched someone defend yesterday and it was brutal. They enforce a very high degree of rigor in their doctoral program, especially at the dissertation level. My face to face experience with the school reinforces my high opinion of them.

 

Who better to continue with a schools philosophy than it's top graduates? I see nothing wrong with this as long as it's not a way of brushing poor rigor under the carpet, and at LU, I can assure you the rigor is fairly high.

 

Ok. But I'm not saying that it happens on occasion. I'm saying that it happens very frequently.

For instance, the Dean of the Graduate School, the Dean of the Center for Counseling and Family Studies, the Director of the PhD Counseling Program - all have their PhDs from LU. The School of Religion is similar. A number of residential Counseling/Psychology faculty received their doctorates from LU, from Regent (DL), Sarasota/Argosy (DL), and Walden (DL).

I would suspect (as in I'm 90% sure but don't have specific data to link to) that 75% of the online faculty are LU graduates.

Again, not being critical. Just saying it is what it is.

I've heard the the Education program is mostly non-LU PhDs - but how much of that is because their doctoral programs are relatively new. If its like the schools of Counseling or Religion (the other two huge programs), then I'd imagine that they'd start hiring their own "home-grown" Education faculty soon.

 

Go to the catalog of most top-tier research universities and you will also find many faculty with their highest degree from that university.

 

I think competition is fierce and it is becoming more difficult to land those tenure track positions.

I don't think the real issue is the delivery format of the doctorate but the reputation of the institution.

I think that a person with a Phd degree from Capella would have the same hard time finding a tenure track job than a DBA earned on campus from Argosy.

People think that because the doctorate was earned via DL it has less value, but most schools offering DL doctorates have little to almost no reputation so their lack of credibility seems to be the main factor.

If the degree is earned via DL from a prestigious institution, I don't think the degree would be worth less because the format of delivery.

 

This is only partially true. The Dean of the Graduate School does have a terminal degree from LU, but the other two you mentioned do not. You are correct regarding DL doctorates, though.

I don't believe this is the case. I completed an online MA through LU, and I don't think any of my instructors had terminal degrees from LU. Some may have had undergraduate degrees from there, but that's a totally different scenario, IMO.

I doubt this would happen. They can attract individuals with degrees from places like the University of Virginia; they would have no need to fill the faculty with their own doctoral graduates.

It seems that your assertions are a bit exaggerated.

But, as a side note, if you are looking for an RA school rampant with academic inbreeding, check out Mid America Baptist Theological Seminary (www.mabts.edu).

 

Huh? I'm correct on everything that I said.

A large number (more than 1/2?) of the faculty (in the above-referenced program) have their PhDs from DL programs - a larger number (more than 1/2?) received their masters.

Again, the point is that I'm not sure how objective the opinion of DL education, LU education is if you're asking LU faculty.