Online Doctor of Arts

I dunno, maybe I should find a nice "professional doctorate" in something or other so the title can go on my urn?

 

I know this is tongue-in-cheek, but the professional doctorate can do wonders for someone looking to establish--or re-establish--a professional identity. Hate to have its first appearance to be its last, though....

 

Harvard's EdD was a scholarly degree equal to the PhD. It was awarded as an EdD because it didn't come from the college of arts and sciences. They've since changed that, and now other colleges at Harvard can award the PhD. Thus, no real need to continue the EdD unless they decided to convert it to a real professional doctorate. I guess they did not.

 

No, but they couldn't resist creating this other "doctor-ish" thingy the Ed.L.D. Yeah, when visiting Cambridge MA, it's best to keep your hand on your wallet.

 

There are still a lot of EdD programs that require a dissertation in practice or problem of practice - basically an applied research project.

 

Both styles of dissertation--scholarly and professional--are comparable in terms of structure, style, level of effort, etc. The main difference is that the scholarly dissertation adds to knowledge--scholarship in the field of study--by either testing or creating theory. (Mine created theory through an inductive study using the grounded theory approach.) A professional dissertation contributes to practice, usually by studying some field-based phenomenon and writing up its implications for professional practice (praxis).

For example, a scholarly dissertation in education might take an extant theory like andragogy and set up hypotheses that can be tested. (Ex: Do andragogical principles improve military technical training, comparing andragogical and pedagogical practices.) A professional dissertation might implement and measure the impact of a new learning program. (Ex: Does a flight line safety training program reduce safety violations and incidents, and to what extent?)

In the former, the field of study (education) gets added to based on the results. In the latter, improvements in practices (in this case, safety training) might show to be effective and become a best practice.

 

I'm not sure why this explanation was typed out...

 

Perhaps you are not the audience for it. The use of "applied project" as a description for a dissertation in a professional doctorate is both inaccurate and insufficient.

I guess adding information to a discussion thread is wrong?

 

Would ACE's M.Ed. in Educational Business Administration suffice or you mean more like an MEA? Looking at the curriculum, it could easily become an MEA.

St. Ambrose offers an MEA. https://www.sau.edu/master-of-educational-administration

 

I guess University of Hawaii, Creighton University, University of Nebraska, etc. are all wrong for calling their dissertations in practice applied research projects because the applied research will be written in a 5-chapter format. I doubt their students care.

https://cehs.unl.edu/edad/programs/educational-administration-p-12-school-leadership-edd/

 

Might have a marketing ring to it, but it wouldn’t fulfill the one degree up requirement that typically goes with a leadership/managerial executive track degree. Suppose that niche could be served by an EdS, but I think many people view them as more or less as someone just not committing to a doctoral program.