Better reputation in the US- UNISA or Free State?

All: I wanted to get the consensus of the board- if you had a chance to choose, which is more reputable? I've seen rankings, but frankly they seem a bit arbitrary.

As a follow up, which might allow for faster degree completion?

Thanks!

 

UNISA is a distance education university, Free State is not, but accepts distance students occasionally. UNISA is held in higher regard than Free State, but is infinitely harder to penetrate.....

Your degree completion will depend on you at either university. Neither one is a quick ticket to a doctorate. They are serious , non-formulaic universities. I consider it to be an honor that I was accepted at the UFS.

 

1) Most people in the US know nothing of either school and so the issue of reputation will be a close call.
2) Whatever you choose people will know it's a distance degree, so that's a wash.
3) You've said nothing about which degree you're seeking. Nothing about subject area. Nothing about degree level. So no one can really comment on speed of degree completion. Let's assume it's a doctoral level degree. I'm guessing 5 years regardless of which choice you make. Many people need 6.

 

If we are talking about doctorates, mine took 4 years at UNISA. I'm only partly joking when I say that nobody outside this forum will particularly care or even remember where you studied. By the time you graduate, everybody and their mother will know all about your research topic to the point of either being interested in your research or bored to tears by it. The topic of where I graduated from never comes up. People are far more interested in my research topic, the thesis and the book I wrote on the research subject. Oh, and they were envious of the cool trips to South Africa and loved the safari photos on Facebook. Seriously!

 

What book did you wrote?

 

It's an e-book called "Collaborative Intelligence" that summarizes my thesis research in a more conversational style. You can get it for free here:

Collaborative Intelligence - Dr. Rob Duncan - 2013 - ISBN 978-0-9918198-0-5 (PDF Version)

 

In terms of name recognition, Unisa probably excels. Not that Free State is inferior academically or that Unisa is superior in any way, only that Unisa is much larger with many more graduates.

 

This is probably true. Plus UNISA has a more genericly cool name

 

Well, I guess we have a choice, Steve:

(1) Go to uh -- some dark corner of the internet (we all know there are many) where one can get pretty well any book for free.
(2) or (legally) read all 241 pages of the actual doctoral diss. for nothing, here: Dr. Rob Duncan » competitive intelligence :smile:

Johann

 

You can get to Rob's Doctoral Thesis directly here (at the UNISA Library site): The role of online social networks in inter-firm collaborative innovation and problem solving

I must say, I am quite impressed just glancing at it.

 

Or even more directly:

http://umkn-dsp01.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/6221/dissertation_duncan_r.pdf?sequence=1

:yup:

 

Well, that's two-and-a-half links to the dissertation. Mine, Novadar's first (that gets you an abstract and a link) and Novadar's second. If you want to read the book instead of the diss., you can read the whole thing here online at Scribd with no payment...

Collaborative Intelligence - Dr. Rob Duncan - 2013 - ISBN 978-0-9918198-0-5 (PDF Version)

Johann

 

Thanks all... I didn't know there was a paywall at Scribd for just looking at the PDF. In any event, I appreciate the interest!

 

For just looking -- there isn't a paywall. Whole book is readable there. I checked; everything in the contents is there.

Johann

 

Cool, thanks. That was the intention. I wanted to give it away rather than try to make a buck off it. Kind of in the spirit of the research topic - collaboration, information sharing and all.

I've kind of moved on, but having done the research, I'm content to get the ideas out there in case they are useful to somebody. The e-book and the thesis taken together should give someone something to work with.

 

Useful ideas indeed, Dr. Rob. I appreciate the spirit in which this was done - making them freely available, etc.

Johann

 

Maybe see if you can download it now. I just double-checked and resaved the permissions to do so.