Non-Reseach Professional Doctorate

I am writing to my fellow DL friends to find out information for my teaching collegue. She wants to attain a Professional Doctorate Degree to aquire more knowledge to continue her teaching career in a college. She told me about the new "Professional Doctorates" that are now becoming popular in UK and Australia. This degree I am told is non-research based and more on work orientation. Can someone give me feedback on any quality, well-known, distinguished colleges or university that offers a Distance Learning "Professional Doctorate". Thanks for your help.

 

One note- it is not a "non-research" doctorate, but rather more in the US mode, being part course work and part research. There have been several other threads discussing this "trend" but ususally not very favorably.

 

The only ones I am familiar with are psychology related. Some Australian (and I think UK) schools are beginning to offer DPsych (Doctor of Psychology) degrees, which are combined taught course/clinical internship/research programs. At first blush many of these seem to correspond to the US Psyd Degree.

Regards,
GE

 

The distinctions I've seen in the U.K. and Australia vis a vis research doctorates is that the Ph.D. is traditionally a research degree. That is, the degree is earned based on the production and acceptance of a thesis. (Any coursework required would be decided by the faculty advisor on a case-by-case basis.)

This is contrasted with "taught" degrees, which much more resemble the course-plus-dissertation format popular at U.S. universities. But even taught doctorates have a thesis requirement (albeit somewhat scaled down from research degree requirements). The emergence of the taught Ed.D. degree offered by some Australian universities is an example of this.

Whether or not the degree offered is a "professional" one seems not to matter too much. There are Ed.D. and DBA degrees available as "taught" and as research-only.

Back to the beginning: the U. of Glasgow offers a Doctor of Business Administration, which is a professional degree. However, it is awarded based upon the presentation of the thesis. There is preparation for the thesis, but that preparation leads to the thesis; it isn't distinctly separate like the coursework component of a taught doctorate. It is both "professional" and certainly not "non-research-based."