The Ed.D. a "lightweight" degree per USA Today.

I find this thread kind of disturbing.

Part of it is probably just Degreeinfo. This is the board that promotes "testing out" and BAs in four weeks, but simultaneouly puts out lots of hot gas about "rigor", without ever managing to see the contradiction. I don't take everything that I read on this board seriously.

I think that some of these dismissive opinions about the field of education reflect and ape the views of professors. Unfortunately, professors are a strange little subculture who despite all their left-wing posing are perhaps the most hierarchical people on earth, like faded European aristocracy. Everything revolves around titles and subtle gradations of higher-and-lower. That's what this thread, like so many others, is about.

Education is a practitioner's subject. What's more, it's a vehicle that in most cases exists to teach something external to itself. Math teachers teach math, history teachers teach history. So expecting education credential candidates to have a bachelors degree in education isn't really appropriate, unless the goal is to teach education itself. But it does make sense to expect teachers to have a bachelors degree in the subject that they propose to teach.

At the elementary school multiple-subjects level, the subject matter competence necessary is a lot broader and a lot more shallow than most academics like. That's why bachelors level liberal studies majors exist and it's why professors sometimes treat them with ill-concealed contempt. But despite all the sneers, those very same purists would most likely be lost if you stuck them in front of a second grade classroom. There's real skill involved in being a good teacher and it does no one any good to haughtily dismiss it.

When we move on to advanced degrees in education, graduate students are typically drawn from the ranks of those with teaching experience. That's nothing to sneer at either. It's not a lack of preparation, it's the best kind of preparation.

Another problem is that advanced degrees in education are often more like advanced degrees in business or clinical psychology or something, than they are like advanced degrees in high-toned subjects like classical philology or Assyriology.

They are commoditized to some extent. The idea is to get a degree at the proper level with the proper accreditation, in order to meet a generic job qualification in a school district or someplace. So to some extent, there's probably a DL-style emphasis on making that process as quick and easy as possible. So standards are apt to slip unless care is taken to prevent it.

But there's a social-class aspect as well. The high-toned subjects see themselves as callings, more than as job-tickets or pay-grade enhancers. People like to think that they study Sanskrit out of a love for the culture and religions of ancient India, not for the crude gutter purpose of landing a job. Of course, graduate students in these kind of subjects are usually aiming squarely at university teaching and at tenure track security. But there's still that carefully nurtured myth of men called apart. (Just think of traditional neo-Gothic university architecture and the richly robed academic processions. The inspiration is clearly the medieval cloister.)

I think that the history of higher education provides numerous examples of applied subjects having had less status than the "higher" callings. In the 19'th century, engineering was something for mechanic's institutes. Universities wouldn't touch it. They were too busy teaching Latin.

And we still see it today. Theoretical and 'pure-research' subjects are just cooler than practical applied subjects. It would be easy to pick a selection of schools at random from the USNews first and fourth tiers and then look at what kind of doctoral subjects they offer. I predict that the programs in subjects like philosophy, classics, art history and Egyptology are largely confined to the top tier, while lower tier schools largely emphasize applied doctorates, more so as you descend the tiers. I also predict that the difference is huge and obvious, not subtle at all. Perhaps I'll do a survey in the next couple of days and start a new thread about it.

And even within the unfashionable applied subjects, the Ph.D. remains cooler than degrees stained with more of a practitioner aura, like Ed.D.s. It just seems more... theoretical... less likely to get its graduates' hands dirty.

There's currently a proposal in California to allow the CSU system to offer 'professional and applied' doctorates like the Ed.D., Psy.D. or DBA, but to continue to deny the system the right to grant Ph.D.s. That illustrates my point perfectly.

I guess that when you look at this stuff as an anthropologist would, trying to make sense of inexplicable behavior in university faculty clubs, a lot of what you see is just snobbery in fine dress.

 

Brilliant post, Bill. I agree with everything you said (even so, it's still a brilliant post) except for calling classical philology "high-toned." You've got to be kidding. If there was ever a gutter of intellectual prostitution, hyperideological cant, sexual exhibitionism and special pleading, and backstabbing raised to an ontological principle, current classical philology is it.

 

I also enjoyed your post, Bill, particularly the idea of education as a practitioner's subject.

The proposal for the CSU to offer the Ed.D. is not really going anywhere, due to at least two major problems:

1. The UC system will not let the CSUs invade their research "turf" (even though plenty of research is generated by Cal States).

2. The Ed.D. has never been established as an "applied" or "practitioner" degree. In terms of what is required to get an Ed.D., it is virtually identical to the "cooler" Ph.D. in education. The UCs realize this and knew that if they allowed the CSUs to offer the Ed.D., there was no way that they could really prohibit the offering of a Ph.D. in education. Once that degree was offered, then Ph.Ds in other discipines would follow. It's the "If you give a mouse a cookie" principle

If the Ed.D. were a first professional degree, instead of a research doctorate, it might stand a chance. I am less informed about DBAs and PsyDs.

Tony

 

I am nearing completion of a masters program in education and admit the coursework is not too challenging. This is fine because I am busy teaching full-time. The next decision facing me is whether to go after the Ed.D. or a PhD. Currently, I am evaluating some of the dissertation only PhD options because I do not have much time to attend 60 units worth of class.

 

Bills post has caught my attention because of the obvious parallels between Education and Social Work, at least in his formulation. Both are "practitoner degrees" where most wind up having Masters degrees and go no further (this seems true to me, at least around this neck of the woods). Both disciplines have a PhD as well as an alternative doctoral level degree nomenclature (EdD v. DSW). People who earn doctoral degrees in Education tend to become school administrators and perhaps have the option of teaching at the university level. People who earn doctoral degrees in Social Work might become administrators within clinics or hospitals, although the doctoral degree isn't always necessary for this. They also might teach at the university level. They also have the option of private practice, although that option comes with the MSW (one needn't earn the doctoral degree for this purpose). I am not aware of any real distinction being made between those Social Workers having DSW degrees and those Social Workers having PhDs. You can find them both in most university Social Work Departments. As for the distinction between Social Work PhDs and the "high toned" academic areas, I suppose that there might be an "attitude" that exists although I wouldn't really know. Social Work research tends to be very much in he tradition of "stuff you can really use." I wonder, is there a perceived hierarchy between applied physics and pure theoretical physics. How about between applied mathematics and pure math? Maybe, but then there's people who pay a lot of attention to what kind of car their neighbor drives or who's got the more expensive golf clubs, etc.
There are snobs and jerks everywhere.
Jack

 

One of my very good friends (a former HS principal) and I were discussing just this very thing about a month ago, as he and I are both starting to shop for doctoral programs. (I work in HR for a large school system.)

I am looking at getting either a D.B.A., a D.P.A or a Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership and just assumed that he would be looking at an Ed.D., based on the fact that it is the degree that I see on about 90% of the resumes of those candidates with doctorates who apply to our school system. I asked him where he was planning to do his Ed.D.

He rolled his eyes and scoffed at the idea, telling me that "the only 'real' doctorate is a Ph.D". and that he knows far too many of his former colleagues for whom he had very little respect, intellectually-speaking, who held the Ed.D. I found this interesting, particularly coming from a career educator.

 

I find this ignorant. Not you, him. Only real doc is the PhD? Watta lotta crap.

 

Not to be confused with the "If you give a moose a muffin" principle.

But seriously...who reads USA Today? I don't see them backing up any of their facts with evidence. The article makes a lot of unsubstantiated claims that would never pass for serious research.

 

Yeah, what he said!

Most of this, I think, is a form of oneupmanship. To take it one step further, I have frequently heard similar criticisms of some Ph.D. fields. Something like: "I certainly wouldn't be caught dead earning that Ph.D. It's not substantive." In my area, the Ph.D.s referred to are usually in education or library studies, compared against psychology or literature or history or physics, but I'm sure that there are other examples.

In the academy, there is an old saying: "the level of self-importance is inversely proportional to the level of real importance" (or some such). The frequent whining and backbiting over credentials sometimes results from a need to be important or, perhaps more precisely, be perceived to be important.



marilynd

 

Yeah, what she said!

Thanks.

 

Quite a piece of work, that acquaintance of yours. That attitude is alive and well, and the other poster's inference that the reason other degrees are lowly-regarded is because they actually smack of something applied to the real world is spot-on.

There is this strange attitude among some academics that they would never stoop to actually DOING anything, such would be just so...so vulgar!

My mother-in-law and father-in-law are profs. Mother-in-law got her PhD from one of those top-notch schools whose grads wear the colorful regalia on commencement. They all kind of bunch together, those birds of a feather, looking down upon those who wear the "mere" black gowns with the three stripes, yet grudgingly accepting them as worthy of at least some consideration. But those with the light blue or purple or olive drab velvet, or without the three stripes at all and merely the long pointy sleeves? Beneath contempt--they don't belong on campus!

It's all quite humorous, I'm reminded of strutting peacocks in all their vanity.

 

And us "mere" black gowned doctors make a LOT more money...

 

Thanks, guys...I felt exactly the same way about the degree snobbery and decided it wasn't worth my time to discuss my degree options with him again, as if I opt for the DBA or DPA it won't be a 'real doctorate' anyway, in his eyes.

The irony of it all...this thread was started because a newspaper that many of us don't view as a 'real newspaper, anyway'.

Not to sound like my friend, the degree snob, but the only time I even take the time to read the thing is when I am delayed in an airport and have nothing left to read. I don't even usually bother to pick it up outside my hotel room door.

 

Lightweight degree's

Yes, it is true that degree snobbery exists, and not only in academia. Unfortunately, the Education degrees have "earned" a large portion of the disdain held toward them because they are often easier to study for and obtain than graduate degrees in other disciplines.

A personal case in point. I studied for a Masters in Adult and Continuing Education. I completed nine graduate hours and felt I had learned very little, even though I was carrying a 4.0 GPA in the Masters program.

I switched over and studied for an MA in European History, and was amazed at the difference in work required for the History versus Education degree.

Having reflected upon this over the years, I think one of the problems with Education degrees in general is that the professors, and degree candidates in Education, spend too much time worrying about "how to say something, versus just getting it said and done with (to badly paraphase the famous saying from Harry Truman).

However, the skills and knowledge I obtained from the education courses I took at the undergraduate level have turned out to be very useful in my career.

Bottom line, at the end of the day what does it matter? The important thing should be "is an individual a holder of a degree from an RA school, or equivalent"? For many employers the discipline the degree is in takes second place to the fact that the individual has the degree.

Case in point, my first post MA job interview, I was competeing against several candidates who had MBA's for a departmental head position in a medium sized hospital. Our years of experience, etc. were all roughly comparable. I beat out the MBA's for the position. Several weeks later, I asked the hospital CEO if my lack of an MBA had counted against me in any way. He replied "No, you were Masters prepared, just like they were".

Anyone else have similar experiences or thoughts?

 

Well, no amount of facts and research can help those who make up their minds to remain ignorant. Since are most of the discussions relating to the Ed.D. and Ph.D. in education. There is no research showing that Ph.D. degrees in education require any more substance than Ed.D. programs. Unfortunately, the field of education did itself a disservice early last century by creating the Ed.D. and not doing away with the Ph.D. in education. Instead of making the Ed.D. an "applied" or "professional" degree, they just kept all of the coursework and research requirements for the Ph.D. intact in the Ed.D. programs. Now we have the current situation. I don't really blame people for being confused.

As a researcher, I have had the "opportunity" to read many dissertations from various universitieis in different subjects. I have seen several dissertations in non-education disciplines (including those that you mention above and some others) that were less rigorous than Ed.D. dissertations that I have read. I have witnessed a variation in quality within and among schools and departments. That is why I find it silly to condemn an entire field of study based on experience with a single grad program or a few graduates.

Tony Pina
Administrator, Northeastern Illinois University