A Complete Paradox!

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by jaiho, Apr 8, 2012.

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  1. jaiho

    jaiho New Member

    Respected Esteemed Forum Members,

    Most Respectfully, I am scripting an entirely new thread while borrowing heavily from Aspen thread I started couple of days ago.

    As a result I received tremendous feedback from my respected senior members.

    I was just introspecting that almost entire DETC Doctorate student audience are mentored by Faculty with RA Doctorates. Just for instance at CalUniversity, my Doctoral Capstone mentors & GRC members have doctorates from Pepperdine/DeVry/USC & even my Faculty at Aspen has doctorates from NCU/Walden.

    Since at Doctorate level individual/one-to-one interaction with Mentor does significantly matters & even the profile of mentors do delegate a lot of respect to student’s work. Student usually publishes with recommendation/incorporation of Mentors which becomes very critical in paper acceptance & consequently mentor plays a lot of part in that.

    Now time & again we are condemning DETC Doctorates who are essentially scripted by Faculty from On-line RA schools & hence by premise we can infer that RA Doctorate Faculty may be knowingly not sharing their expertise with students or in rare case some may be extremely incompetent.

    I have over ten years experience in Education & I have come across that profile of Doctorate Mentor contributes critically to the worth of degree. If I am associated with exceptionally brilliant Faculty & even I am from low tier school, I can still learn research writing skills & may publish in mid tier journals/conferences.

    I apologize in advance in case my text may offend some of my respected colleagues.

    Feedback solicited!

    regards
     
  2. SurfDoctor

    SurfDoctor Moderator

    पढऽने-सिखाने It is difficult to understand what you are trying to say.
     
  3. Randell1234

    Randell1234 Moderator

    Are you saying DETC degrees should be more accepted if they are taught by RA faculty?
     
  4. jaiho

    jaiho New Member

    Sir,

    I was saying that on the large, RA Doctorate Faculty are on rolls of DETC schools. That is student audience at DETC schools are instructed by RA Doctorates.

    If RA Doctorate have value then we can at least expect that they must be imbibing DETC students with some threshold minimum of knowledge & hence this might add bare minimum credibility to DETC degrees given the fact that they in fact are designed by RA Doctorate Faculty.

    This becomes very important at Doctorate level where DETC students work closely with Mentor holding RA Doctorate.

    regards
     
  5. ebbwvale

    ebbwvale Member

    If I am correct, the poster is saying:
    (1) RA Professors are teaching NA Doctorates;
    (2) Presumably the RA professor is adopting reasonable standards in his/her interaction with the NA student;
    or alternatively
    (3) The RA Professor is unethical (a position that Jaiho does not accept);
    (4) The Professor/student relaionship at Doctorate level is such that the student draws some acceptability from the credibility of the RA Professor;
    (5) The poster, Jaiho, considers that the degree will allow him to publish in medium journals.
    Publications are extremely important for academia here and I suspect India. Not much mentioned in this forum when discussing academic appointments.
     
  6. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    I don't remember anyone saying thay DETC doctorates were worthless. What I remember was that some people were saying that DETC doctorates were unlikely to get you a teaching position at an RA school.
     
  7. dl_mba

    dl_mba Member

    In the past we have seen professors holding RA Doctorates associated with Degree Mills. This would not add any value to the Degrees sold by those schools.
     
  8. Maxwell_Smart

    Maxwell_Smart Active Member

    Yes, but the comparison is not relevant unless the implication is that NA schools are equivalent to degree mills, and I'm sure you would never make such an unfair statement...

    It's obvious that the quality of instructors will likely have an impact on the quality of instruction. But instructors holding RA Doctorates is not an automatic quality seal, especially considering that some RA schools like some NA schools have been said to hand out grad degrees like gumballs, with a lot of the material being nothing more than pointless busy work.

    Right or wrong, students usually create the public perception/reputation of a school from their reviews or from their success post-graduation. For example, when I saw the name DeVry in the OP's first post, I'll admit that I automatically chuckled upon seeing the name. Is that necessarily right? No, because I've never gone to DeVry. But, DeVry has carried a bad public perception for a long time and that has obviously influenced my thinking.
     
  9. Ian Anderson

    Ian Anderson Active Member

    As far as I can determine DeVry does not award doctorates.
     
  10. ebbwvale

    ebbwvale Member

    I suspect that we may be thinking the same. Interesting observation. A mistaken inclusion into the mix of Professors with RA Doctorates may be revealing or am I reverting to my formerly distrusting self? I am in therapy but have the occasional relapse.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 9, 2012
  11. jaiho

    jaiho New Member


    My Mistakes Sir,

    I misspelled it , My Mentor have doctorate from Argosy University not from DeVry. I regret my mistake in case that gave an entirely wrong perspective to discussion.

    Doctorates of my GRC Members are from:

    1, Argosy University
    2, Pepperdine University
    3, USC@LA

    regards
     
  12. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member


    Jaiho,

    Most online schools "rent" faculty that might be full time somewhere else. This is a cheap way to add credibility to a school.

    The quality level of the faculty is not measured mainly by their credentials but by their level of contribution to research.

    I couldn't find a single research article from a faculty member that lists Aspen University as their main affiliation in google scholar.

    Google Scholar

    This tells me that Aspen has zero presence in the research area. The professors that are used to supervise doctoral students most likely work as faculty somewhere else but do not list Aspen as their main affiliation for some reason. As they most likely are getting paid peanuts for this work, we can safely assume that their level of commitment to this school is minimum.

    Another issue is that Aspen does not list their faculty on their web site but only a list of universities that are supposed to be the alma mateur of their faculty. It is not so easy to validate if they really have Harvard graduates as the names are not included.

    Another concern is that the administrators biography published on their site do not include name of the universities for graduation. This seems to be done on purpose to avoid questioning.

    You can keep fooling yourself that this school is credible, this is your choice. I believe you are smart enough to realize the kind of the school that you are registered in.
     
  13. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member


    This is a never end discussion. Bottom line, these degrees have a market and useful for some people.
    I would feel comfortable doing the Computer Science Doctorate from Aspen if this was just for personal satisfaction and wanted some dressing in my resume.

    Most people that follow these programs have some financial assitance for continuing education. At the end of the day, most of us would rather end with a doctorate instead of a certificate from a continuing education school. The doctorate might help to show some level of expertise in the office environment and provide certain level of differentiation. The doctorate also looks more impressive than a continuing education certificate. However, both the continuing education certificate and DETC doctorate have similar uses.

    If someone wants to use a DETC doctorate program for a career change as a full time academic or use it to support a research grant application. May be this person did not his or her homework before enrolling in the program.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 9, 2012

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