Ed.D. degree?

Discussion in 'Education, Teaching and related degrees' started by aluapairam, Nov 30, 2011.

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  1. aluapairam

    aluapairam New Member

    Hello everyone!

    This is my first post ever... I'm considering getting a Doctorate of Education in Leadership from St Mary's University of Minnesota and was wondering if you have heard about it or know about its reputation/accreditation.

    I currently work at a for-profit company as a trainer. In the past, I've worked as a teacher, instructor or tutor. I am passionate about education! My undergraduate degree and M.Ed. are focused on curriculum development and education.

    - Do you think getting the Ed.D. will provide opportunities for professional advancement? (I know that at the 'personal level' I would enjoy it 100%)

    - Have you attended or heard about this program? If so, I'd like to know what you think.

    - Is an Ed.D. much different from a Ph.D.? (I'm not planning to change careers and I do not want to switch to academia but I'd like to teach an online course some day if I ever have that opportunity.)

    A friend of mine discouraged me from getting the Ed.D. She said it is not as prestigious as a Ph.D and will not open that many doors. She also said the Ed.D. is geared towards practitioners and school administrators.

    Thoughts?

    Thanks in advance for reading and replying to this post!
     
  2. rmm0484

    rmm0484 Member

    It depends on your goals. An Ed.D would be an asset in your current commercial professional situation, or if you aspire to be a practitioner or school administrator, but it will not confer PhD level expertise/understanding in any specific area except education. It may fill a square, however, if a Doctorate is all that you need to teach as an adjunct.

    As an example, I am enrolled in an Ed.D program at Aspen due to an $$ offer I could not refuse, but I have a Master of Science in Management with a concentration in Logistics. I only aspire to be able to continue as an online adjunct part time, so my goals are more personal than professional. I would have gone for a DBA at Aspen, but they weren't offering one at the time. A DBA is equivalent to an Ed.D in that it is a practitioner degree. An Ed.D is just as rigorous as a PhD, it just has a different slant to it.
     
  3. DetAntMPS

    DetAntMPS New Member

    I think any degree is what you make of it, on the Doctorate level. I have had this discussion for a long time with various people, who hold both degree’s. Yes, the Ph.D is a great research based degree. The Ed.D is a broader degree, IMO when it comes to a Doctorate degree the university which you attend counts for a lot. I have spoken to many traditional administrators that have informed me on this information. An Ed.D from a top tiered research based B&M school "MAY" more weight than a Ph.D by an online only university. However, if your goal is to teach in an online environment then of course a Ph.D from an online only university will have more weight. IMO the background you have on the subject matter, your experience, your published work on the subject matter will have more weight in the job market, then what letters you have at the end of your name.
     
  4. StefanM

    StefanM New Member

    I will change this to "WILL IN EVERY SITUATION CARRY MORE WEIGHT" if the degrees are in the same field (i.e. Education).

    An Ed.D. from Michigan State, Harvard, or some other top-tier school in education will trump a PhD from Northcentral every time.

    The only time there would be a question is when the Ed.D. is from a lower-tier school (e.g. a regional state university). Even then, the online PhD will still be suspect.

    Education is already denigrated in academia as a field of study, and having an online doctorate in an education field, regardless of nomenclature, will make a career path more difficult than having a B&M doctorate in an education field.

    This depends. Teaching in an education department? Still the EdD from a B&M wins.

    If you are teaching in a non-education field, then the PhD in the subject would often trump the EdD mostly because the EdD would be out of the field.

    ....UNLESS the EdD is from a prestigious school, and the position is teaching undergraduate courses. Then it depends on the institution, the dean, etc. The power of a prestigious degree cannot be underestimated.

    This is probably true outside of academia. In academia, however, snobbery is an art form.
     
  5. StefanM

    StefanM New Member

    Don't do it, unless you have someone else paying for it.

    It won't matter that much in the corporate world, and an Ed.D in academia is for administrators and (less often) for professors in K-12 teacher education departments.
     
  6. DetAntMPS

    DetAntMPS New Member

    StefanM, I would agree with most, if not all that you had posted on my comments. My comment is when you state; "Don't do it, unless you have someone else paying for it." Is this in regards to the Ed.D program?

    IMO when we discuss an Ed.D program it is for academia, and I will 100 percent agree that it will not matter in the corporate world.
     
  7. StefanM

    StefanM New Member

    Yes, it was for the OP in regards to the Ed.D. program. It sounds like a personal fulfillment kind of thing, and at $550+ per credit hour, it doesn't sound like a good investment for what the OP wants to do.
     
  8. widereader

    widereader New Member

    If you plan to be a school principal, either Ph.D. or Ed.D is good. The number of units is less than in Ed.D than Ph.D. I have heard lots of university teachers that still have good ranks in the profession even though they only have Ed.D.
     
  9. GeneralSnus

    GeneralSnus Member

    Ah, those poor university teachers that only have Ed.D. degrees.
     
  10. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Citation needed.
     
  11. Anthony Pina

    Anthony Pina Active Member

    Ed.D. vs. Ph.D. in education

    Is St. Mary's University accredited?

    Yes, by the Higher Learning Commission of the NorthCentral Association. It is absolutely legit.

    Will getting an Ed.D. provide opportunities for professional advancement?

    It depends upon your particular organization, but in many (if not most) cases, the answer is yes.

    The Ed.D. much different than the Ph.D.?

    I have in my possesion, the studies comparing the Ed.D. to the Ph.D. going back to the 1980s and am in the process of leading two research teams (one comparing the Ed.D. to the Ph.D. in instructional technology and other comparing the D.B.A. to the Ph.D. in business and management at all accredited schools of business in the U.S.). Thus far, no one has been able to document significant differences between the Ed.D. and the Ph.D. in education (other than in people's perceptions of the two degrees). In my own experience, I nearly completed a Ph.D. degree, was transferred to a different state, and completed my doctorate at a university that awarded only the Ed.D. in my field. I had to do the same things for both degrees.

    Is the D.B.A. equivalent to an Ed.D.?

    Yes. Both were created at Harvard University as a result of a policy only allowing Harvard's College of Arts and Science to award the Ph.D. The creation of the Ed.D. and D.B.A. made it possible for Harvard School of Education and Harvard School of Business to offer the doctorate.

    According to the U.S. Department of Education, both the Ed.D. and D.B.A. are research doctorates equivalent to the Ph.D.

    Would someone with an Ed.D. who has a solid record of teaching, scholarships (publication, conference presentations, grants, etc.) and leadership positions in professional associations beat out a candidate with a Ph.D. who does not have an equivalent record?

    Yes, in all but the most exceptional case.

    Is an Ed.D. degree only for K-12, administrators or teacher ed professors?

    No. There are thousands of professors with the Ed.D. who teach outside of schools of education. I my own research, I have found a surprising number of university business professors with Ed.D.

    Does an Ed.D. require fewer units to complete than a Ph.D?

    No. The number of units varies by institution. The average for both Ph.D. and Ed.D. degrees tends to be about 60 semester/90 quarter units.

    There are some universities, such as Vanderbilt that have developed Ph.D. and Ed.D. programs that are very distinct from each other. However, when one looks as dozens or hundreds of these programs, it becomes clear that this is the exception, rather than the norm.
     
  12. AdjunctInstructor

    AdjunctInstructor New Member

    The theoretical distinction between the two degrees has always been that the Ph.D. is “researchoriented,”
    whereas the Ed.D. has been directed towards educational practice and the application
    of theory and research. The Ed.D. was originally conceived of as “equal in rigor, but different in
    substance” to the Ph.D. In the academic world, however, the distinction between these two
    degrees—and in the kinds of doctoral dissertations completed—has not always been so clear (Northern Illinois University, n.d., para. 3).


    What about Northern Illinois University’s Ed.D. program in Educational Psychology?
    While the majority of our educational psychology faculty hold the Ph.D., we believe that our
    Ed.D. program is equal in rigor and substance to the graduate programs from which we all
    came—Brown, Harvard, Stanford, Northwestern, UCLA, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Many of our
    graduate students are practitioners and they understand and appreciate the need to learn how to
    conduct original research to inform and improve their practice (Northern Illinois University, n.d., para. 5).

    Northern Illinois University. Retrieved from http://www.cedu.niu.edu/lepf/edpsych/phd.pdf.
     
  13. AdjunctInstructor

    AdjunctInstructor New Member

    More on Ph.D./Ed.D.

    The following quote I believe shows the similarity and the differences between the Ph.D. and Ed.D. degrees.

    The theoretical distinction between the two degrees has always been that the Ph.D. is “researchoriented,”
    whereas the Ed.D. has been directed towards educational practice and the application
    of theory and research. The Ed.D. was originally conceived of as “equal in rigor, but different in
    substance” to the Ph.D. In the academic world, however, the distinction between these two
    degrees—and in the kinds of doctoral dissertations completed—has not always been so clear (Northern Illinois University, n.d., para. 3).


    What about Northern Illinois University’s Ed.D. program in Educational Psychology?
    While the majority of our educational psychology faculty hold the Ph.D., we believe that our
    Ed.D. program is equal in rigor and substance to the graduate programs from which we all
    came—Brown, Harvard, Stanford, Northwestern, UCLA, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Many of our
    graduate students are practitioners and they understand and appreciate the need to learn how to
    conduct original research to inform and improve their practice (Northern Illinois University, n.d., para. 5).
    (I Could not block quote ).

    In my own investigation it appears to be a trend towards the Ed.D. degree being more practitioner oriented. I suspect this trend was started by the online/DL Universities i.e. Walden, University of Phoenix et al. Regardless if my assumption is correct or not I believe there is a need for a practitioner doctorate. It seems that the Ed.S. fills that need to some extent. However, many Ed.S.programs have very little research included into the curriculum and would not fill that need. Liberty University's Ed.S. does require a research core (EDUC 712 and EDUC 718). Which is beneficial , for Ed.S. degree holders, on two accounts...immediate intermediate level research skills, and a jump start towards the full doctorate, research or professional.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 25, 2011
  14. Anthony Pina

    Anthony Pina Active Member

    The Ed.D. was invented by Harvard's School of Education in the 1920s so that it could offer its own doctoral degree. First professional "practitioner" degrees (e.g. M.D., J.D., Pharm.D., D.D.S., D.V.M., etc.) are entered into following the bachelors and replaced the research courses and dissertation with practicums, internships, externships and other hands-on activities, there is (with a limited number of exceptions). However, instead of creating a true practitioner's degree (like a first professional degree), the Ed.D. has been, at most U.S. institutions, merely a clone of the Ph.D. with the same requirements (prior masters degree, research methods coursework and a research dissertation). The same is true of the D.B.A. degree.

    A few institutions have made efforts to distinguish the Ed.D. from the Ph.D. Vanderbilt's educational leadership degrees and Morehead State's new Ed.D. are examples. But at the vast majority of institutions, the Ed.D. at one institution is virtually indistinguishable from the Ph.D. in education at another (Northern Illinois Ed.D. would be in this category. If it were at another university, it would be a Ph.D.) In previous years, several universities have converted Ed.D. programs into Ph.D. programs without any substantive changes in the programs.
     
  15. warguns

    warguns Member

    No matter how much holders of EdD "complain too much", no one in the academic world takes anyone with an EdD degree seriously. There may be EdD degree programs as rigorous as PhD programs somewhere but it's certainly not typical. But it is true that a PhD in education is usually just as wretched at an EdD.

    So, if you intend to stay in the public school sector an EdD is perfectly suitable. If you have an academic job as a goal, get a PhD. Also, frankly, if I were considering an academic career, I would certainly get my doctorate from a better-known school than St Mary's of Minnesota. If I were staying in the public schools, you may as well earn it from the easiest and cheapest route. No one will care.

    Ask yourself, do you want to spend the rest of your life apologizing for your degree?

    "You have a docorate? A PhD?
    "I have an EdD. It's the same as a PhD.
    "Why isn't it a PhD then.
    "It's a professional degree. It provides more practical training".
    MEGO
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 26, 2011
  16. Anthony Pina

    Anthony Pina Active Member

    How sad! Your prior attempts to pick fights by making ridiculous and unfounded statements like those above haven't worked before and will not work now. No one with any experience in academia would take seriously what you have said. I have seen your other posts and you are more intelligent than this. Happy Holidays!

    Tony (Who has never had to apologize for, nor explain his degrees to anyone).
     
  17. AdjunctInstructor

    AdjunctInstructor New Member

    warguns,

    What you wrote is rubbish.
     
  18. Bruce

    Bruce Moderator

    I think this has reached the point of diminishing returns......
     
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