Too many people with online DBAs and PhDs?

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by RFValve, Jul 18, 2010.

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  1. JeepNerd

    JeepNerd New Member

    With nearly a 100% placement rate for most B&M PhDs I would agree that they are not out there job searching!! If/when they are starting to look, someday down the road if they decide to actually leave their original college, my guess is they simply look at Chronicle and such and send their resume directly.

    For obscure PhDs (I saw one a moment ago in Ancient Civilization something or other at Wake Forest) perhaps the placement is not 100% but for biz/accounting I just don't think they are looking for jobs and certainly not at Resumebucket.

    It does sound like a good place to put your AD if you are a school wanting to sell online degrees though!!! :)

    As if it was not obvious, the reason I am here is that I am considering PhD / to secure future adjunct teaching income. My top choices at "for profits" schools is TUI and NCU (accounting) and nfp B&M with short residency schools is Anderson & Hampton (both appear to have 4 week summer sessions that knock me out though)

    Baker College is in the running since they are a B&M, NFP, DBA (self design = accounting?) but I am not sure that really ends up being any more powerful than the TUI or NCU. MOST of BC faculty appear to have their docs from Walden btw!!
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 19, 2010
  2. SoldierInGA

    SoldierInGA New Member

    (As I don't have any hard numbers on the doctorates coming out of these for profit universities, I can only speculate.)
    The main assumption and utility of pursuit of a doctorate is to add something significant, new and meant to advance the research in the field that the doctorate is awarded in. Looking at some of those resumes posted, I wonder what type of expertise do these people possess that will enable them to come up with a singular innovative topic to add to the current research for their particular field. How rigorous are the dissertation writing and professor mentorship provided at these universities that will provide any significant contribution to the field of study?
     
  3. EllisZ

    EllisZ Member

    Census hired a ton of folks with Masters and Ph.D's this year to fill out forms. It's bad out there.

    Meanwhile a good friend of mine with a UoP Bachelors is making $140+ as a consultant in a major national consulting firm. So, the degree is only part of the equation. He lists it and is proud of it. At the end of the day it's his work that builds his reputation.
     
  4. SurfDoctor

    SurfDoctor Moderator

    This is right on.
     
  5. Scott Henley

    Scott Henley New Member

    The likelihood of a low quality DBA or PhD making it through a university HR department, hiring committee, Dean and Provost of the university (who in many cases approves all new hires) is very unlikely. I don't think there are but a handful of tenured faculty at ranked RA B&M institutions that graduated from these for-profit virtual schools. Certainly none at AACSB-accredited business schools.

    These degrees might have some utility within ill-informed businesses that are really not experts in screening out bogus or low-quality degrees. To a reputable degree holder, these people are not threat in academia....not at all.
     
  6. SurfDoctor

    SurfDoctor Moderator

    They wouldn't even get an interview. HR would take one look at the school they were from and trash the application. I'm sure NCU (see below) would fall into that category. That's old news and who cares anyway?
     
  7. edowave

    edowave Active Member

    I'm jumping in the conversation late, but where are you getting this data from? Are you only talking about accounting PhDs?
     
  8. EllisZ

    EllisZ Member

    Yes, we get it.

    If you want a tenure job at a reasonably high-quality university then you should have a degree from a reasonably high-quality and traditional university. Not DL, not for-profit, not a no-name school. That's clear.

    However in the real (business) world, it's not just "pulling the wool over the eyes" of ignorant HR people, but to give yourself an edge over your peers. All other things being equal (rare), and assuming you have an accredited degree, then even a doctoral degree from a short-residency school will give you the edge over someone without one.

    An accredited degree from a non-traditional school isn't something to be embarrassed about.
     
  9. StefanM

    StefanM New Member

    Your'e assuming that a doctoral degree automatically confers an advantage.

    If the doctoral degree is not required for the position, it may not make that much of a difference. In some cases, it may hurt you (e.g. overqualification).
     
  10. EllisZ

    EllisZ Member

    Again, I said all other things being equal.

    The government hired Census takes with doctoral degrees for survey taking. They then bragged about this. Was a doctoral degree required? no. Did it help? It seems to have helped. Overqualified? Yes. Advantage? Yes.

    Circumstances play a role.

    I'd rather have it, and not list it if I thought it was a disadvantage then to not have it when it might help.

    A corporate training manager is a good example. An Ed.D isn't required, but it helps.
     
  11. Anthony Pina

    Anthony Pina Active Member

    RFValve is absolutely right here. Every time this subject comes up, someone makes an erroneous statement about how useless DL doctorates are for those in academia. This is nonsense. One of the biggest target audiences for DL doctorates are teachers and professors who are already employed at schools, colleges and universities and who wish to upgrade their careers without having to quite their jobs.

    Now it is true that a DL doctorate is generally a bad choice for the person who is looking to get hired as a new full-time tenure-track university teaching position (e.g. Assistant Professor). This is not the target audience for DL doctoral programs.

    As far as the glut of DL doctorates, there actually is data about this. The U.S. Dept. of Education and the National Science Foundation publishes the survey of earned doctorates and the National Center for Education Statistics keeps track of the number of doctoral degrees awarded by each institution. Of the 48,000+ U.S. doctoral degrees that were earned in 2008, how many were DL doctorates awarded by for-profit universities? Less than 2,000.

    Of the top 100 doctoral grantiing universities, how many were DL for-profits? Two (Capella & Phoenix). Northcentral and Walden (the next two largest) do not even crack the top 100. TUI and Jones International each award less than a couple dozen doctorates each year. Kaplan and Strayer do not offer doctorates. Most of Argosy's doctoral degrees are not fully DL.

    The fact is that for-profit DL doctorates do not currently constitute a significant portion of the doctoral population. Will that change? Perhaps, but not likely, since many B&M universities are actively developing their own online doctoral programs.
     
  12. me again

    me again Well-Known Member

    Nutty numbers and exageratted images and misnomers

    The above post FINALLY turned a light in this darkened pitch black room!!! :rolleyes:

    It should also be noted that doctoral holders make up less than one percent of the population, so the aggregate numbers (in relation to the total population) are very small. When doctoral holders exceed one percent of the population, then we can start talking about grossly inflated numbers. ;)

    The way some of these posters are writing in this thread, it sounds like every crew shift leader at McDonalds has a DL PhD or DBA! :eek:
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 20, 2010
  13. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Agreed. I think a lot of people who have never actually worked in higher ed want to sound like they have expertise, so they parrot rules of thumb without understanding the important of those rules' exceptions and limitations.

    -=Steve=-
     
  14. JeepNerd

    JeepNerd New Member

    Yes this was based on my reading about the PhD accounting program at UNC, Virginia Tech, USC, etc, here locally!

    PhD in Information Systems, Bryan School of Business, UNCG
    "Did You Know? The Information Systems Ph.D. Program has 100% placement of its graduates in positions."

    Of all the local (UNC) schools that I looked at, placement does not seem to be an issue!?

    This was an interesting article about the geography of placement (how often they stay local)

    http://aaahq.org/AM2010/display.cfm?Filename=SubID_2748.pdf&MIMEType=application/pdf
     
  15. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    These numbers can be deceiving. How many out of these 48,000 doctorates granted were in business? If it is about 10% then these 2000 might be considerable as online schools primarily graduate in business.

    Also, these numbers might be a bit dated already. I noticed that most of the online doctorates that show in resume bucket are very recent and many of them from the last two years so I wonder about the increase of online doctorates in the recent years.
     
  16. Randell1234

    Randell1234 Moderator


    You forgot that they will call you and laugh, ask for a list of your friends so they can call them and talk about how you wasted your time, post your picture in the paper and say "don't hire this guy/girl because he/she has a PhD from an acceditied school but not a school as good as mine", and make you paint a scarlet letter on your chest. :eek:
     
  17. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    I wouldn't really trust statistic given by the University trying to sell the program. Most of the Univerities can claim 100% placement in any field as graduates will eventually find work after graduation, the question is how many of these actually work in the field of study and how many work in a position according to their level of study (e.g PhD working as a professor).
     
  18. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    Universities have very different protocols for hiring compared to the Industry. I'm sure that a PhD from NCU wouldn't hinder you for an industry position as experience as skills play a more important role in the hiring. Most companies only have the HR department and a hiring committee so you only have two levels before a position is approved.
    On the other hand, University hiring has several levels of approval before a position is offered. It would be very hard for someone with a PhD from NCU to pass unnoticed after HR, hiring committee, Provost, Dean, etc check your CV and credentials.
    I believe it would be easier for a PhD from an online school to get a job at another online school. That is why it is common to see that vast majory of faculty at online schools have doctorates from online schools.
     
  19. CalDog

    CalDog New Member

    I think that's a bit misleading. At traditional B&M universities, the doctoral degrees issued represent the complete span of human knowledge, from Italian literature to structural geology to Asian history. Online universities, in contrast, don't have anything like this breadth; their doctoral degrees are heavily concentrated in particular fields, like business administration, psychology, or IT.

    In those specific fields, DL doctorates probably do have a significant impact, and probably are contributing to doctorate devaluation. For example, a recent AABRI study found that the number of new DBA degrees listed in the ProQuest dissertation database ranged from only 100 to 200 per year, for the years 1990 to 2009. See Table C3 in Appendix C.

    Realistically, it is quite likely that RA DL degrees from schools like UoP and Capella do in fact represent a significant fraction of that total. Furthermore, it wouldn't surprise me if there are also significant numbers of additional DBAs issued by non-RA DL schools (DETC, state-licensed, etc.) Such schools may not submit dissertations to ProQuest, and would therefore not be included in the 100-200 number cited above.
     
  20. Ruble

    Ruble New Member

    This conversation was an interesting read to say the least. The truth is, a degree is only as good as the person who it represents. Where I live, and I would venture many other areas of the country, a bachelors degree is still the standard of entrance and promotion in most rural work environments.

    What I see is quite a few posters who that feel as though their elite status as a Ph.D. holder is being lessened by schools they consider inferior. Get over it. If you are threatened by the Walden, Capella, and UoP's of the world then it says little for the confidence in your own education. Just my opinion, if you don't like it then so be it.

    Dr. Pina said it best, MANY of the current Ph.D. / Ed.D. students are those that are already in academia who want to increase their salary (me included). If someone feels the need to spend the kind of money required to pay for an advanced degree (especially from some of the aforementioned schools) then I will not question their choice or purpose for obtaining that degree.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 20, 2010

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