Liberty's Ph.D. in History + more!

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by chrisjm18, Apr 29, 2019.

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  1. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    I think at last count there were 41 schools offering an online master's in history.
     
  2. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    Do you really mean to tell me that K-State doesn't have a go0d Oceanography program?
     
  3. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    Liberty also offers an online MA in History.
     
  4. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    Darn! I should have gone to a program that has classes in the history of entrepreneurship.
     
  5. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    Chris: Where does the Bible quote in your sig line come from?
     
  6. Michigan68

    Michigan68 Active Member

    Philippians 4:6,7
     
  7. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    I have two MBA degrees, but I don't think business qualifies as a field related to history.
     
  8. chrisjm18

    chrisjm18 Well-Known Member

    My signature only contains verse 6. Philippians 4:7 (NIV) states "And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."
     
  9. Tireman 44444

    Tireman 44444 Well-Known Member

    Defense moved to December. Should be the last movement.
     
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  10. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

  11. chrisjm18

    chrisjm18 Well-Known Member

  12. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    While this is certainly the norm around these boards and around a certain tier of school, this is not a universal norm particularly as you climb into the elite schools.

    If you are fortunate enough to get into a PhD program at an Ivy or that elite non-Ivy tier that includes the likes of Stanford, MIT etc, you're limited to their faculty. You take what they offer or you move aside because there is a list of people behind you who will gladly take the same.

    I've been hanging out with a fair number of doctoral students from Cornell lately, it's opened my eyes a bit to how differently schools function as you climb up through the tiers.
     
  13. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    I think that in the more selective sort of doctoral hiring, in the sciences and for faculty positions at research universities, hiring committees will be less interested in the name of the university a candidate earned his/her PhD from, than in who the candidate studied with.

    The leading programs will occasionally expand that a bit. UCSD, which is huge in the Biological Sciences, conducts its Biology programs jointly with the Salk Institute of Biological Studies (located on its own campus adjacent to UCSD). UCSD allows doctoral students to choose research advisors from the Salk Institute research faculty, all of whom technically hold UCSD adjunct faculty appointments.

    https://biology.ucsd.edu/education/grad/phd/academic-advising.html#Thesis-Advisor-(Doctoral-Commit

    I believe that UCSF has a similar arrangement with the adjacent Gladstone Institute, all of whose Principal Investigators hold UCSF adjunct appointments. (When one recently won a Nobel Prize, UCSF lost no time in claiming him as one of theirs.)

    Stanford seems to require that its dissertation advisors be active members of the Stanford faculty. But dissertation readers may on occasion include retired faculty and (more rarely) individuals from outside Stanford who are judged to have special expertise in the subject of the dissertation. (I'm imagining bringing in somebody from someplace like NASA-Ames.)

    Yes, if a doctoral program doesn't have any expertise or specialists in a student's proposed area of research, that university wouldn't be a good choice.

    I think that one can get a good feeling for how that works in the humanities by looking at the detailed specialty-specific rankings in the Philosophical Gourmet Report. While this is Philosophy, I'm sure that History works exactly the same way.

    https://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/breakdown-of-programs-by-specialties/

    Things that jump out include the fact that many of these rankings in particular philosophy research areas bear little resemblance to the US News rankings. Who would have guessed that in the opinion of the leading philosophers of science polled, the top two departments in General Philosophy of Science are currently the University of Pittsburgh and UC Irvine. (Or that Harvard or MIT wouldn't appear in the top 20.)

    Another thing to note is that these rankings are based on perceived (by other prominent philosophers) faculty strength and they will bounce around quite a bit as star professors are lured like sports free-agents from one team to another. (Often taking a cohort of their doctoral students with them.) Older professors retire and younger ones start to make names for themselves.

    And the pecking order in one research specialty might have little resemblance to the ranking in another specialty. Some departments are very strong in particular areas and quite weak in others. Prospective doctoral students need to be aware of that and know which are which.

    And there's the fact that a particular department might be perceived as strong because of the presence of a particular professor and the circle that he/she's attracted. For example, David Chalmers is huge in the philosophy of mind and any department that he's a member of will be up at the top of the rankings for the philosophy of mind. But Chalmers holds rather idiosyncratic views on the subject. So if a prospective doctoral student disagrees with those views and anticipates battling Chalmers' views, then his department might not be the best place to do it, even if it's very highly ranked. Better to seek out a doctoral program where one of his prominent critics is working, even if it's slightly lower on the general pecking order.
     
    Last edited: May 20, 2019
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  14. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    hierophant has made some great points related to the field of Philosophy and I'm quite sure these apply to other disciplines as well. I'd add one more thing. I think that people should bear all this in mind when they consider the prospect of applying for full-time, tenure-track teaching jobs. You may have done a great job on your dissertation and it might have come out of a very good school. But if the hiring institution is trying to strengthen it's department in a specific area (like Epistemology, for example) then it really doesn't matter that your work in the field of Philosophy of Mind is fantastic and came from an Ivy or whatever. It's not what they're looking for and you're not even going to get an interview.
     
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  15. chrisjm18

    chrisjm18 Well-Known Member

    The number of students registered in the first course of the new doctoral programs:

    Ph.D. in Communication = 26
    Ph.D. in History = 24
    DPA = 13
    Ph.D. in Nursing = 13*
    Ph.D. in Psyc. (Indus./Org.) = 51**

    Note: Registration is still open for the fall term.

    *This course is also a DNP course, so there's no way to know who's in the Ph.D. or the DNP (from my end)
    **This is a 500 level course which has master's students. No way to tell how many Ph.D. students are taking this course. There is 1 student registered for the first 700 level course (Ph.D.)
     
  16. mattbrent

    mattbrent Well-Known Member

    Wow! Haven’t been on the board in a while, and THIS is a surprising development. Hopefully more folks create programs now.
     
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  17. chrisjm18

    chrisjm18 Well-Known Member

    Two program changes coming at Liberty in Spring 2020.

    1. Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Education: Educational Law Concentration (new concentration)
    2. Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Strategic Media (new program)
     
  18. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

  19. chrisjm18

    chrisjm18 Well-Known Member

  20. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

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