Doctorate Program Title vs Dissertation Matters?

Hi Everyone,

Does your Doctorate program title is important or the dissertation more important? I have talked to several professors, they said that the dissertation matter, and the program title does not mean anything. For example, you can have Ph.D Information Technology, but your dissertation is in Malware Analysis Detection than Ph.D in Computer Science, but dissertation in Cyber Warfare.

What do you think? I still believe that the Doctorate program title is more important than a dissertation.

 

I think it depends on the field. Even though there are degrees in forensic psychology, most forensic psychologists have degrees in clinical psychology with dissertations, concentrations, or work experience that focused on forensic psychology. This is preferred because forensic psychology majors aren't meant for licensure. Due to the shortage of people with doctorates in criminal justice, CJ programs still have to hire a lot of professors with sociology degrees. This is where you would look for someone who did research in criminology/CJ. While not as common, there are even people with political science and economics degrees teaching CJ based on their research.

People with doctorates in national security, international security, or security studies are almost non-existent. I had a professor with a degree in national security studies, but he earned it during the time Union Institute and University was letting students create their own majors. This is one of the things that got them into accreditation trouble. Other than that, I think there are only a few doctoral programs in security studies and I know at least one is only 1 or 2 years old. Anyway, my other security studies professors had degrees in international relations, history, leadership, and public policy. One said he qualified to teach the subject based on his masters degree in strategic studies. I'm sure the others qualified based on their research/dissertations.

Often, what you will end up teaching within a program depends on your past and present research interests. I have CJ professors who only teach courses on race/ethnicity and juvenile delinquency and others who only teach statistical methods.

 

For the record, Union didn't get into "accreditation trouble" regarding that issue. They ran into the very political Ohio Board of Regents. Their accreditor had just renewed them for the maximum 10 years. Go figure.

As for the degree title vs. dissertation, they both matter, for different reasons. The degree title is more of an HR thing. It can possibly exclude you if it isn't titled right. The dissertation is of more interest to other scholars, hiring committees, etc.

BTW, the kind of doctorate matters, too. A professional doctorate might not always be acceptable where a scholarly one is asked for. But there aren't any hard-and-fast rules about this.

 

I would agree with those professors. With the exception of maybe professional doctorates, programs have become so inter-disciplinary that program titles mean almost nothing. It's what you actually did that counts.