Value in online PhD for teaching?

It could be if you teach at prestigious institution for a face to face MBA program for example. However, most of the online schools are not exactly prestigious.

I always leave out my online jobs of my resume when applying for a face to face job. I do this since a job interview where I was questioned about my commitment to the job if I had two online jobs, the prospect employer thought that I was going to use the employer's time to teach online.

If you apply to academic jobs at B&M schools, many won't take very seriously gigs at online schools. They know that most of the online schools only ask you to moderate canned courses and don't consider this teaching. I leave my online jobs out of my resume also when applying to face to face teaching jobs.

 

I agree, many look for a PhD just for the prestige. However, this market will be more likely to go after a PhD from a known school with some credibility. As more B&M schools start offering DL options for doctorates, I would think that online schools will start getting less students. People looking for prestige wouldn't want to go to schools that grant hundreds of doctoral degrees per yer, Harvard is Harvard mainly because they only grant a handful of business doctorates per year.

The mass production of doctorates is going to affect online schools at some point.

 

This writer is extremely proud to list an allegedly unsavory (yet RA) online institution on his resume and it seems that people are extremely impressed with it. It's also good money, albeit it's also an extraordinarily heavy workload for being a part-time job. However, it would be a dream job for retirement!

 

I also enjoy and am proud of my online teaching. The question was if it would add prestige to a resume looking to impress a prospect employer, in my experience employers are not really impressed about this and can sometimes play against you.

 

I think that will be more opportunities in the future.

Every college (junior college, etc...) will have to have courses offered online just to stay competitive. They may not have to have a whole program online, but will have many of the courses. Most of these institutions will try to support these courses with existing staff, but they will also add adjunct instruction.

There will most likely be more online-only schools in the future as well. The start-up / ongoing costs would be minimal because there are no facilities. They tend to use adjunct instruction primarily.

Institutions of higher learning will have to accommodate the expectations of their customer. This customer wants to have options on the delivery of the course and wants to be able to attend on their hours (allowing them to continue a job). Of course there will always be traditional students that attend during the day.

Bottom line is that there will be more opportunities for adjunct instruction in the future.

 

I currently teach full-time at a B&M school. We are currently rolling out blended classes where students meet on campus part of the time and have other days online. The training for faculty has been undertaken internally. I have a big advantage over most of the faculty because I have taken some online classes and have a good understanding of how to engage students in learning online.

I believe the online option is here to stay. In my opinion, as colleges add more online courses, the value of having some classes completed online during your degree completion will give you an advantage when applying for a job.

 

I teach to learn. I enjoy the interaction, reading the course materials, helping a student that interested, and the activity. I hope to turn it into a full time thing, but the money is going to have to be better.

Interestingly, my wife was an elementary school teacher and we talk all the time about my class. She give me grading hints (ways to tell someone something is needed). She and I are having a great time. Now she may go back and get her Masters (she has got the smarts for anything she wants to do).

Many side benefits beyond the money for me.

Maybe not exactly on point, but it is an ancillary / anecdotal point.

Thanks,

 

As a general rule, an online PhD has good acceptance for K-12 teachers and administrators, community college faculty, adjuncts and administrators and unviersity adjuncts and administrators. Full-time tenure-track faculty positions at universities continue to demonstrate the lowest acceptance.

 

It varies, according to the accrediting body and also the disciplines and degree levels offered by the university. Yes, the regional accreditors like lots of terminal degree holders among the full-time faculty ranks (and having adjuncts with doctorates does not hurt, either).

 

Maybe you will have a slot for me when I finish my PhD//

 

Quite possibly. We are growing and addition new programs, so I'll have to look at my colleagues at Degreeinfo for potential faculty. If you have 18 graduate units in marketing, I'm looking now.

 

Damn - management - about 30, IT - 20, and healthcare - 15 (one class short). Maybe next time.

 

value of online PhD

I used to state that an online PhD would never be hired at the B&M state university (Masters offering) I teach at. However, it has become so expensive to live in California, the starting salaries are so low and the teaching conditions so poor, that we've been reaching further and further down the academic food chain in faculty hires. In other words, faculty we try to hire take a look at real estate prices and they decide to take a job in Arizona where houses cost half as much.

Recently we hired someone to the tenure track with a B&M PhD from Central Michigan University, a US News tier four (the lowest) university. It's unbelievable. Ten years ago this person wouldn't have made it through the first cut. For comparison, Ball State and Kent State, not exactly Oxfords of the mid-west are in tier three. The University of La Verne is in tier three for God's sake.

http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/college/national

So, in my opinion, someone with a distance PhD from a B&M school would now be competitive.

I think that those with degrees from totally online schools (eg: Union, Walden, Capella) still would not be seriously considered and I am told that this is true even in departments where there is truly a faculty shortage (business, engineering, CIS). This, of course, pure snobbery, but there you are.

 

Wow - you just made me feel like something you scrap off the bottom of your shoe. What if they ever hired a, God-forbid, person with an "online degree" {gasp}. Maybe there would have to be an exodus in protest! Imagine...the likes of "those people" teaching "here".

 

online degree

Sorry, I'm just stating the facts. There are 2100 faculty. None have on-line degrees. The hierarchy in academia is like the Hindu caste system.

I just spoke to someone who was looking for a job teaching in business. He was told, in no uncertain terms, that a purely online doctoral degree would not qualify him. He has an AACSB B&M MBA.

 

I understand - I spoke to a woman on a plane (PhD and professor at FSU) and she told me that Nova "went down a notch" in some people eyes when they started to offer online degrees - that was a few years ago and I am not sure how much that has changed. With so many schools moving to the online model - how could they feel that way? I am sure it will change.

 

I believe it depends on the instutition and their accreditation - for example, if someone received their degree from Case Western (tier 1), (who has an online PhD program with residency requirements), they would not be looked down upon in this way - I think you are only looking at purely online schools, which I would tend to agree there is still a stigma.

I do not believe it is entirely the delivery of the program, but rather other variables, wuch as the school and accreditation they hold.

 

It seems to me that this question has so many variables that it's impossible to give it a flat answer.

What's an "online PhD"? What does "teaching" mean? What subject does somebody propose to teach? What kind of position are they applying for? What else besides a degree are they bringing to the table?

If somebody is applying for a community college teaching job where a masters degree is the formal requirement, a doctorate from a low-prestige proprietorial DL program might look good and function as a tie-breaker. I get the impression that there are lots of adjunct teaching jobs in high-demand business subjects too, and low-end doctorates might serve pretty well there too.

At the other end of the spectrum, tenure-track hiring in traditional academic subjects in doctoral-research universities is going to pay a lot of attention to doctoral departmental reputation, who the candidate actually worked with, recommendations, research experience, publications, teaching experience and stuff like that.

In that kind of hiring, I don't think that the USNews "tiers" are very relevant. Hiring committees are subject-matter specialists who are looking for candidates with a particular skill-set, to teach particular classes and to raise a department's profile in a particular research area. They already know which doctoral programs are hot in that specialty and they know who is working where.

As an example of that, USNews has the U. of Alaska Fairbanks in its fourth tier. But UAF comes in at an impressive number 10 in the world citation rankings for vulcanology, ahead of MIT and Berkeley. Those hiring geology professors at research schools can be expected to know these things.

There are probably other situations where practical experience is what tilts the scale. I can imagine an MSME with many years of responsible R&D and design experience at an employer like Northrup-Grumman getting hired to teach practical job-related engineering at a masters-level engineering school, with any doctorates reduced to a formality intended to raise the school's terminal-degree stats with its accreditor. We probably encounter that kind of thing a lot in nursing schools and places like that. I expect that actual management or entrepeneurial experience will influence hiring for management or entrepeneurship teaching too.

That has relevance to the DL thing. If an American does the University of Leicester's DL PhD in archaeology, the DL aspect might put off many employers. They might prefer a student who had the advantages associated with studying full-time on campus, working alongside professors in departmental research groups and so on. But... suppose that the remote student was employed by the US National Park Service at the time and did his/her research on-site with NPS specialists at Chaco Canyon National Historical Park. That practical/DL combination might suddenly look very good indeed to a university, especially one looking for a archaeologist with a Southwestern American-Indian focus.

 

I don't know if I could say that community colleges prefer doctoral level graduates from low tiers than Master graduates from better schools. Most CCs don't see the need for a PhD and some put more emphasis on experience and teaching abilities. I don't think that an MBA from Harvard would be considered less than a PhD from NCU.

The online PhD seems to me used for 4 main purposes:

1. To increase the salary of a teacher that is already a faculty member and just needs the doctor title for a higher pay.
2. The adjunct that needs to stand out from the crowd with the doctor title. As adjunct hiring is not as rigorous as full time hiring, the adjunct might look better in paper by adding the title of Dr.
3. Personal improvement. Some students need the challenge and the online seems to be the way to go for a busy career professional.
4. To increase image and public perception. This might work for self employed individuals that need to increase credibility with the Dr title. This group is hoping that the Dr title will give them more business and prestige.

 

Add to the AAS an AOS- same deal, credentials established by the department. Our culinary department does not even require an associates degree for our chef instructors.

Also, it may seem obvious, but I'll say it anyway- even at a community college, you need 18 grad hours in the subject, so having a PhD in something not offered as a class for undergrads isn't helpful. If you can find it at the 100/200 level in college catalogs, you'll have a lot more open doors than the highly specific upper level or grad courses simply because of the numbers. EVERYONE takes English 101 - our college has over 50 sections of that course alone this fall. (online and F2F)