DBA or Ph.D in Educational Leadership?

Discussion in 'Education, Teaching and related degrees' started by Luciano Batista, Apr 29, 2020.

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  1. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    Rich, two different type of products, one for professionals that are not interested in Academia and the other for prospect academics. Academic would see the DBA as inferior for an academic position while professionals might see the PhD as to focused and narrow and useless for professional work.

    The inferior is perhaps a bad reference and relative, academics in general (personal experience as a DBA holder) perceive the DBA as inferior for academic work as it does not concentrate in publication and academic skills while the professionals see no value in sitting in a classroom five years to come up with a dissertation about a mathematical model that explains why a person uses ebay instead of amazon. Some people just believe is a waste of time to spend 5 fives producing something that nobody cares or reads. The inferiority complex is quite relative.
     
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  2. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    It happens quite often here. The poor guy just wanted to know if the DBA would be a better option than a PhD in leadership and probably did not like the answer that both are not exactly the best for what he wants. PhD in leadership has been criticized here quite a lot as "one size fits all" doctorate that is meant for everyone but at the end gives a product with little market prospects as there are not many research opportunities in leadership or academic positions that require people to teach leadership. Ideal degree for someone just looking for the PhD tag that might boos your career as an academic administrator in my opinion.

    Then you have the DBA that was not designed exactly to be an academic but people use it for this purpose. I was offered a job as an administrator and faculty with this degree but was never able to get a research teaching position with the same degree because criticism that this degree is not meant to be a researcher. Maybe yes or not but I have experienced the stigma that the DBA does not prepare you to become a research faculty period by my peers that rejected me few times for this role. On the other hand, I get offered roles in administration all the time because PhD faculty lack the management skills as they seem to be too narrow in thinking and less pragmatic.

    The OP wanted to hear that DBA or PhD would be the answer but in my opinion neither are best for a tenure track position.
     
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  3. felderga

    felderga Active Member

    I would be be curious which programs that our opera star is seeking? Having a Top 25 MBA and earning a DBA from a average run of the mill program (like the one I'm doing at Trident) won't get you much in ROI in the business world and as others have posted adjunct work or lower tier CC / small colleges. I'm wondering if a PhD in Organizational Leadership (business/management focus) as oppose to Education Leadership might be another option as it would give you the leadership skills that can be applied both in business world as well as educational institutions.
     
  4. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    Try your own experiment, use the web site below:

    https://www.higheredjobs.com/faculty/

    I used the word DBA in the search engine, this gave me 135 results but most adjunct positions and some full time but mainly accounting and finance.

    Then I used the key words PhD "Educational leadership" in the engine with only 22 results, with mainly adjunct and some administration positions and only one tenure track.

    If we go with the results above, I can conclude that the DBA might still give some good results in fields like accounting and finance and the PhD in "Educational Leadership" mainly to some administration positions but only few.

    I would only do a PhD in Educational Leadership if I were already a full time employee of an University and was aiming for an academic administration career. I would do the DBA if I have a good credential in Finance or Accounting and was aiming for a full time teaching position at a small university.

    The safest route is a traditional five year PhD program for academic position, we can like this or not but this seems to be what schools are looking for.
     
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  5. Luciano Batista

    Luciano Batista New Member

    Thank you. Do you know how to inform me how many credits I have to have taken to be considered an expert in the field and to be able to give classes in this area of knowledge? Could I complement my MBA credits to give business classes?
     
  6. Luciano Batista

    Luciano Batista New Member

    I'm still searching. Thanks for the sugestion.
     
  7. Luciano Batista

    Luciano Batista New Member

    I'm still searching. Thanks for the sugestion.
     
  8. Luciano Batista

    Luciano Batista New Member

    I actually want to be an academic administrator or in another area, I want to teach some classes, but I don't want to be a full-time teacher. Thanks for the suggestions.
     
  9. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    Hi,
    Most schools would require 18 graduate credits in the area of expertise. If you hold an MBA, a graduate certificate would do the trick. There seems to be a demand of finance, accounting, data analytics and IT adjuncts all the time. Accounting is good but requires a CPA or CMA, the last certification is easier to get for an MBA as the requirements are quite similar to financial management and managerial accounting for an MBA program. For Finance, many require a CFA certification and this last one is not so easy to get. There are other accounting certifications that are in demand such as CISA, CIA and CFE that are not so hard to get either.
     
  10. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    I work in administration, normally any PhD in an education area would work for this so the PhD in Educational Leadership would work. The DBA would work either but mainly for business schools.
    For administration, most schools just look for experience. Academic administration is about academic curriculum reviews, academic advising, leadership, accreditation, meetings, paper work filling, presentations and normally are required to teach few classes.
    I teach 2 classes per term and do administration work, I was hired with a DBA in a business school. I wanted to switch to research faculty and it has been very hard mainly because the stigma of the DBA being not enough for research and lack of prestigious DBA also. Traditional faculty expect people with a five year full time PhD from a prestigious school and it is next to impossible to break this paradigm, the only exception is accounting that hire pretty much anyone with a doctorate as long as they have a CPA in Auditing. Auditors CPA make close to 200K in Canada after 10 years of experience so you can see that you are not going to find many doctorates with CPAs looking for 100K jobs.
     
  11. Luciano Batista

    Luciano Batista New Member

    Thank you. So would a graduate certificate in finance be the best option?
     
  12. Luciano Batista

    Luciano Batista New Member

    Very enlightening. Thank you.
     
  13. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    Finance is good but you also must like it and it has to agree with your CV. In few words, you will have a hard time to be hired as a finance professor if you have a graduate certificate in Finance but your CV shows mainly an HR profile. If you have general management experience and have a little of finance involved, it might work.

    There is no guarantee in life as you know, meeting the minimum requirements does not mean that you will get what you want. However, looking at the demand is a good start, check the link below:

    https://www.higheredjobs.com/faculty/

    As you can see, there is a lot of accounting jobs. However, this is tricky, I wrongly thought that getting an accounting degree would automatically give me more jobs as adjunct. I completed a masters in accounting and finance but never worked in Accounting but only IT and production. I never got an offer to teach Accounting in spite of the Accounting degree and the huge demand but I used my degree to teach IT Audit and Finance Tech that is more in line with my profile.

    So the degree is just part of the equation, you need to convince the prospect employer that you are the best for the job too.
     
  14. Luciano Batista

    Luciano Batista New Member

    Can the PH.D in Leadership help me get a position as Financial Director or Human Resources Director at a university?
     
  15. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    Go look at people who hold such positions. Do they have such a doctorate? (My guess is "no.") Those fields do not typically require the doctorate, and I'm not convinced one would help you get the job.
     
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  16. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    There are two type of administration jobs at Universities. Some are academic administrators such as program directors, chairs, education directors, accreditation directors, etc and others are more business function directors such financial directors, HR, etc. For academic administration jobs, the PhD in Educational Leadership might help as many of these positions would prefer a doctorate while business function directors normally don't hold doctorates but have experience in similar functions.

    I agree with Rich, normally business function directors don't need a doctorate.

    Many academic directors don't have doctorates either, perhaps the best approach would be to get a job first at a University with your MBA in an entry level job such as academic adviser, career adviser, student coach, etc and then build your way up to a director job. Many schools provide tuition free degrees for employees so you might want to do your doctorate at the same University where you work and then use it to build your way up to administration.
     
  17. JoshD

    JoshD Well-Known Member

  18. Jonathan Whatley

    Jonathan Whatley Well-Known Member

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  19. JoshD

    JoshD Well-Known Member

    Thank you! I did not dive too deep into the program. I just saw that it said 8 full-time programs leading to a PhD or DBA and rolled with it. Does appear they have gone fully PhD and no longer offer the DBA.
     
    Jonathan Whatley likes this.
  20. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

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