100% Online PhD Programs - State School or Private U.?

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Nemo, Oct 5, 2018.

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  1. Nemo

    Nemo Member

  2. chrisjm18

    chrisjm18 Well-Known Member

    What about WCUPA's DPA? It's fully online.
     
  3. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    I've wondered that too. Those short "residencies" must be tremendously important, if they distinguish a sound DL doctoral program from "crap". So what actually happens during the time students spend on campus? Whatever it is, why is it so crucial?

    My own opinion is that the plausibility of an entirely-DL doctoral program is probably going to be a function of the major subject.

    Research doctorates in the laboratory sciences are going to require hands-on laboratory work and the laborious development of technique. Not only that, but also the experience of being embedded in a research group, learning-by-doing, so to speak.

    Students in practical subjects need experience practicing their subjects. I can't imagine graduating as a physician if I have never examined a patient or as a dentist if I have never stuck my hands into a patient's mouth.

    So I would agree with Steve Levicoff that a 100% distance program in one of these subjects probably would be "crap" (in my estimation anyway). But having said that, I'm hugely skeptical that a 35 day residency would improve things much. The farthest that I'd be willing to go might be a hybrid program in which lecture classes are online, while labs and practicals are conducted in person.

    But... in subjects that are typically conducted in classrooms and in tutorials, going 100% online seems much easier. My own area is philosophy, and I can easily imagine a philosophy doctoral program being conducted totally by DL. English literature, stuff like that. Theology. There would have to be a high degree of electronic interactivity though, allowing students to communicate freely not only with professors but with each other.

    So in these kind of subjects, subjects where work product is typically written or spoken, I think that a 100% DL doctoral program, conducted entirely by telecommunications, could work very well, and any short "residencies" would probably be superfluous.
     
    Last edited: Oct 7, 2018
  4. CalmLogic

    CalmLogic New Member

    It is hilarious when searching the old threads and "easiest, "fastest," and "quickest" comes up in the title of people's posts for wanting a PhD!
     
  5. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    Just asking...

    Mightn't a short residency introduce a subjective element to the evaluation?
     
  6. Steve Levicoff

    Steve Levicoff Well-Known Member

    Residencies take a different form at every school, so I won’t even begin to generalize on them. But one thing that foster is accountability, which is sadly lacking in the helping professions. Past that point, I’ve discussed this issue every few years dating back some 30 years. I’m just not into repeating myself these days, and you can search previous discussions of this on both DI and other forums dating back to Usenet.

    If you don’t understand what can be accomplished in person versus by the other means you suggested, you are clearly not r eady to pursue a Ph.D. You may be at some point, but not now.

    I’ve never heard this question asked by someone with a Ph.D., only by people who don’t have a Ph.D.

    So, how many residency days did you do for your Ph.D.?

    Oh, wait, that’s right . . . You started this thread, and clearly do not have a Ph.D. So my answer is: I have 35 days more residency than you do.

    Now, be a good boy or girl and go read my Wikipedia biography (which, I’m always careful to say, I did not write). When your credentials match mine, let’s talk. In the meantime, get to know the difference between being competitive and collegial. I’ll take the latter any day.

    I don’t doubt that, so let me elaborate on a key point: The position I’ve taken regarding residency experiences has to do directly with Ph.D. and other doctoral degrees in the helping professions. I don’t give a crap about non-helping professions (such as business, finance, accounting, etc.). I have nothing against them; they’re just not my thing. On the issue of helping professions, if you have a totally external doctorate, you are an incompetent, inept nincompoop. And if I have to define the term helping professions, ditto.
     
  7. Nemo

    Nemo Member

    I'm not sure why you are so incredibly aggressive when I am clearly just looking to facilitate questions to expand my own knowledge, but I appreciate your opinions, despite your rude delivery. Not to the point that I am going to go find obscure message boards from years gone by, but I like your passion all the same.
     
  8. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

  9. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    ...because we couldn't expect a prospective PhD candidate to be interested in doing research...

    [​IMG]
     
  10. Steve Levicoff

    Steve Levicoff Well-Known Member

    Well put as always, Kizmet.

    When I did my bachelor’s degree at then-Thomas Edison State College:
    • We did not have DegreeInfo available to us. Hell, we didn't even have Usenet groups at that point.
    • The Internet was in its infancy, and TESC did not have a web site. Nor did anyone else.
    • Online education did not exist. There were correspondence programs and low-residency programs, but not online programs or courses.
    • All of the publications you see online today did not exist. We had to go to a real library and drop lots of dimes (later quarters) into copiers to get articles from academic and professional journals.
    • The only resources we had in those days to non-traditional programs were John Bear’s books. And many of us had every available edition of those. And we bought postage in rolls of 100 stamps, because getting information from distance programs required that we drop them a letter to request a catalogue.
    Before I chose Thomas Edison for my B.A., I personally visited (that means visited in person) Edison, Mary Baldwin College, Skidmore College, and a few other programs I was considering. By the time I made my decision, I had put many months into actively researching programs. Without the benefit of ill-informed and useless opinions from people like those on this board who are either engaged in mutually masturbatory political arguments, or even starting their own degree mills in the Caribbean before they have even graduated with their own Ph.D. in a bullshit field.

    I did the same thing before I chose an M.A. program, physically visiting Antioch, Goddard, Vermont College (back then, the BIg 3 of graduate programs) , and even throwing in a visit at Union in case I decided to progress to a Ph.D.

    By the way, the time I took from matriculation to graduation at TESC was one year and 10 months, keeping in mind that I entered with only 6 credits. In other words, I ended up doing it fast, cheap, and easy (considering that I pulled off 96 credits via PLA). Yet during my actual search for a program, I never used the words fast cheap and easy. That was something I accomplished without it being a goal.

    So, can it be done fast, cheap, and easy? Actually, it can be. But I’ll be damned if I’m about to tell you lazy asses how to do it.

    Another by the way . . . When I say that I “went to TESC,” I actually went to TESC. I regularly met with my program advisor, I personally delivered my portfolios to my PLA advisor, and I received my exams directly from the hand of my Testing & Assessment advisor. S when someone asked where I “went to” college, I didn’t have to couch my answer in language like, “Oh, uh, I earned my degree from…” I actually did go to all of the schools from which I graduated.

    When I did call a school on the phone, my visits also enabled me to put a face with a name. And, more important, my advisor was able to put my face with my name. There’s a lot to be said for personal contact.

    So if I seem jaded when I look at distance education today, then excuuuuuuuuuuse me. The notion that the person you call one of your “professors” is no more than a quiz grader, often anonymous, who can not give you any significant degree of personal attention and doesn’t know you anyway. He or she is also likely an adjunct who is hardly invested in a school.

    And when you have long-established schools, even those that are non-profit, ranging from SNHU to Liberty to University of the Cumberlands, having a higher percentage of adjuncts than ever and offering doctorates in bullshit fields like leadership and organizational management, you can take higher education today and shove it where the proverbial sun don’t shine.

    As for courses, how many did I take? Well, if you subtract the colloquia, seminars, and peer hooplah, the answer is that in three degrees – B.A., M.A., and Ph.D., the number of courses I took was… none. I could have taken more courses, but canned, rote learning wasn’t my style. Writing was my style, which is why I never wrote a paper of less than 50 pages while doing my M.A., and managed to squeak out a book for a major publisher in 30 days during my Ph.D. dissertation phase. Back in those days, non-traditional programs focused on critical thinking as a primary methodology, instead of the canned, rote B.S. we have returned to today.

    So regurgitate your factoids, kiddies, because one day you’re gonna kick yourself in the butt and whine that you never learned how to think. I, of course, will simply continue to do what I am doing today. (Drum roll…) As always, I’m laughing at you.
     
    Maniac Craniac likes this.
  11. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    If people insist on insulting new Degreeinfo members, guess what?

    Degreeinfo won't have any new members.

    The board has been getting slower and slower over the years and it really should try to be more friendly to prospective DL students.
     
  12. Steve Levicoff

    Steve Levicoff Well-Known Member

    Actually, I rarely insult new members. More often, I ignore them. And. In fact, we have had more new members in the last six months than we have had in the last several years. But you may notice a pattern in how newbies register for the board. They tend more often to use real or real-sounding names. They tend to include their age. They tend to include a little more background information than in the past, but still omit information that is relevant to their question. Many, though not all, tend to post only once or twice and then disappear despite not having been insulted by anyone. The trends lead me to perceive that many of them are including spam website references in their original posts that are caught and deleted by the moderators. Unless there is firm evidence otherwise, I let newbies slide and don’t respond at all.

    In short, DI is much healthier than it has been for several years in terms of newbies. So who do I insult? The putzes who argue politics and sit on the extreme edges of both the right and left wings of the bird. And you know who you are, dahlings. I predict that the extremist right and left wing bullshit that goes on here will be the downfall of DI, along with newbies that join only to necromance old threads and whine about a particular school or person (that was the downfall of DD, if y’all remember).

    The difference between DI today versus other boards and other eras is that the political whack jobs who spend most of their time instigating while they, at least, spend some of their time talking about distance education. And the ones who instigate? They would not be half as successful if it weren’t for the long-term members who allow their buttons to be pushed and respond in the first place. (For all of those who think I instigate, you can probably count the times I talk politics on less than two hands. People may guess where I stand, but they’ll never know for sure because I don’t discuss my position.) Am I suggesting that people ignore inistigators like me again and decimon? Well, um, duhhhhhhhh . . . :rolleyes:
     
  13. Nemo

    Nemo Member

    If I may inquire, why are these "bullshit fields"?
     
  14. Nemo

    Nemo Member

    I have had morning coffee, and discussed politics with, arsonists, child rapists, and murderers, so it takes a lot for me to feel insulted. I don't mind this banter here so much as I just don't quite understand the tone with which some of my inquiries have been met. But like any group one enters as an outsider, there's a learning curve. I'll stick around.
     
  15. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    Trial by fire. Keep it up and you may pass the rookie test.

    [​IMG]
     
  16. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    You, at least, have made an effort to assist the newbie. Most people don't even try to help at all. So how friendly is that?
     
  17. Helpful2013

    Helpful2013 Active Member

    Glad to hear it. I don't have much advice to offer, as aside from UNISA, the 'distance-learning only' options I'm aware of aren't in my field of study.
     
  18. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    [​IMG]
     
    chrisjm18 likes this.
  19. Steve Levicoff

    Steve Levicoff Well-Known Member

    Funny. And I can get behind funny, even when it purports to be about me.

    I can even get behind funny when a guy who doesn't even have his doctorate yet establishes a school in Dominica that has multiple signs of being a degree mill (it would easily fail the NIFI Criteria test), purports to offer a three-year bachelor's degree as its highest credential, and calls his school New World University.

    But I digress . . . :D
     
  20. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    If anyone who's actually done anything in the field in the last couple decades has advice, please feel free to reach out, as I'm always open to it from actual practitioners.
     
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