Nova Southeastern University

drwetsch,

It is certainly not my intention to make claims that necessitate further substantiation. I'm simply stating an educated opinion about NSU. Take heart, I really am an NSU Ph.D.! I completed my Ph.D. at Nova and I know the quality of the students, the quality of the faculty and the goals of the institution. I know the school can do much better in recruiting better faculty and could certainly improve on the academic quality of its students and curriculum. I'm glad to see that so many people are willing to defend it from its opponents but I’m not one of them.

It is interesting that many of the replies focus on references rather than exploring the issues. Tom's list of NSU alumni holding full-time faculty positions accurately reflects the poor academic acceptance of NSU graduates. I’ll leave it to you to debate the details on rankings but needless to say, NSU is a Tier 4 school and those NSU graduates who fool themselves into thinking it isn’t are mistaken.

Owl, Ph.D. (Nova 2001)

 

The point is that the concepts of "National Doctoral Granting Universities" with four "tiers" and so on are from U.S. News. Whereas you imply that these are widely used categories, independent of the U.S. News guide. And the idea that Nova Southeastern, University of South Dakota, University of Montana, North Dakota State University, University of Colorado - Denver are all "Tier 4" universities is not a generally accepted categorization, but comes directly and only from U.S. News.

 

Owl,

You might like to consider the following statement from Rich Douglas (original thread: http://www.degreeinfo.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/002029.html ). I agree with him completely on this.

 

Owl:

Why did you ever attend Nova since your opinions are mostly negative remarks toward the school?

You should just mail back your Diploma to Nova and have them void your degree and shame on you for attending a school that is not of value.

As far as the list Nova’s Alumni accomplishments and teaching assignments are from schools that are locally/nationally recognized (Ball St Uni. Uni. of Kansas, Long Island University and Saint John’s and etc.) Guess these schools are not good enough.

I have a gut feeling that you are making up all these allegations to make an issue that Nova is not a school of quality. Guess what dude? You are the only voice with these negative remarks.

The FACT SPEAKS FOR ITSELF AND YOU CANNOT HELP IT!!!!

 

As noted by other posters Tier 4 is a US News ranking. US News gets a lot of press and there are many viewpoints. For instance, you are using the "Best Colleges" guide from US News which is geared towards undergraduate study. US News publishes another book on "Best Graduate Schools." Interestingly enough, in the 2000 edition NSU was named as one of the top Schools of medicine in primary care. It tied with such schools as Brown University, Ohio State, and University of Chicago. It beat out Yeshiva University. Hence, one could say it tied and did better than some Tier 1 schools.

In the same issue it is noted that the overall bar passage rate for NSU law graduates is 83%. This ties with tier I University of Florida and Tier II Florida State and Univ. of Miami.

Finally, what the US News rankings really mean is much debated. Is it possible to say that a Tier 4 National University is higher ranked than a Tier I Regional University or a Tier I Liberal Arts College? One could argue that a national university classification is better than a regional or liberal arts school because they offer a wider number of programs. As US News points out" "The national universities offer a full range of undergraduate majors, as well as master's and doctoral degrees. Many place strong emphasis on research, and receive federal funding for their research endeavors." -- 1999 Issue of US News "Best Colleges." (I lent my more recent edition out to my daughter but the rankings do not seem to change much.)

As such, over the 1400 schools listed in the 1999 edition the national university ranking of NSU would place it in the top 20% of schools in the United States as reported by US News.

Of course, one would argue that this approach is not fair because maybe some of the Tier 1 regionals are better. As we get down into the subjective banter of these rankings then we must ask where are the graduates from these schools and what are they doing.

Overall, NSU fares quite well in my opinion.

John

 

Tom,

I must concur. Owl needs to come out in order that his Ph.D. claim can be validated. We do not even know what field it is in? At this point I cannot believe that someone who has invested heavily in a Ph.D. is willing to trash his school so easily.

The arguments presented by Owl are also illogical to me. This was apparent when he tried to separate exploring issues and citing references. The whole point of references is to be able to support a claim. Hence, the point of view that supports NSU is well supported but Owl's arguments are not.

The statements presented by Owl are starting to remind me of the "Lew----" arguments of the past.

John

 

Doesn't the difference between an educated opinion and mere bullshit lie in the fact that he former can be substantiated?

Would you be so kind as to tell us what you think the issues are? Have any specific problems with Nova ever been discussed in this thread?

It does? How's that?

Would you be so kind as to explain what "tier 4" means to you? How does this term apply to graduate programs? Can one make qualitative judgements about particular graduate majors, research specialties and even about individual graduates based on this "tier" ranking?

My contention is that it is ridiculous to try to use USNews' schoolwide undergraduate rankings to judge the quality of particular doctoral departments, research specialties and graduates.

 

While I'm not going to take a stand on the issue of the quality of NSU degrees (since I've never attended, met at a conference, nor even read a dissertation in my field from NSU) I would like to point out that Clinical Faculty [which is what this NYU person is] is not the same as faculty. In this case it seems that all the psychology doctorate holding staff of the affiliated teaching hospitals and clinics are listed as clinical faculty.

As for the faculty list, whether because of quality, because of institutional discrimination or perhaps because of the specific degrees it grants*, the list of NSU graduates in faculty is no more impressive that any of a number of much smaller, low prestige programs. Of the 40 someodd people I count a very small handful that are faculty in doctoral granting programs and few more in small somewhat selective schools. Many of the remainder are adjuncts, community colleges faculty and administrators where doctoral degrees have often been either not required, or required only to fill a requirement.

-me

* Ed.D.s (and other education doctorates) have historically been used by a large number of people to move into school administration [principal etc] at the precollege level. This would naturally dilute the percentage of doctoral graduates on College faculty.

 

Gerstl

The list of accomplished former students of Nova is just a small portion of the overall total number of graduates. Nova has approximately 65-70 thousand alumni graduates and to make an assumption of the school quality of education rendered on glance of the said list is not fair/illogical judgment. This is just a random list that rendered by the school of business of some (portion) of their graduates, and half dozen from the school of Ed.D

The university was listed as ninth among the top 20 US universities awarding doctoral in all field. NSU’s 573 doctoral awarded were more than number 10 ranked. Harvard and number 11 ranked Stanford.

NSU made a second place showing the category Professional and Other Fields in awarding Doctorals under top ranked University of Texas at Austin. Also, NSU awarded highest number of Doctoral to African Americans granting 290 Doctoral above second ranked Howard University. The school ranked 18th in awarding Doctoral to Hispanics and 14th for Native American. (Source National Opinion Research Center)

Most importantly, NSU has approximately 18,000 students and is the largest independent institution of higher education in Florida. It ranks 25th in the size of its graduate programs among the 1,560 universities in the United States with graduate programs and 10th among independent universities.

 

Gertsl,

Obviously the NSU degree fulfills the requirements for college administrative jobs quite well (.e.g. deans, provosts, presidents, etc.). What is wrong with this? For those NSU grads that are adjuncts I would assume they undoubtedly have other careers. It has already been established that NSU is not a Harvard or Yale so are we arguing prestige or quality?

As for degree pedigree (i.e. prestige) it certainly exists. Ivy League grads tend to look down at state university grads who look down on grads from smaller colleges and so forth. Rather than pedigree others look at quality of the programs. I believe that the quality of the NSU programs stands out as NSU grads are certainly qualified for the positions they hold. Like most people they earned their degree to make a qualification for a job or a professional position. NSU has obviously served them well.

NSU is also accredited by at least 15 recognized accrediting agencies so the quality of the programs is not lacking when reviewed by outside entities.

When selecting a degree program one must chose a program that is going to suit your needs. These needs are based on such attributes as aptitudes, commitment, learning style, and degree expectations. For example, in a study conducted by Michael Viollt, resulting in a book titled, "The Best 201 Colleges for the Real World." (This text includes NSU) Viollt points out that there are two groups of college students -- the traditional student who is just out of High School and then there are the working adults trying to upgrade their skills. When both of these groups were combined Viollt found that career and job development is the prime motivating factor for students to go to college.

In my opinion NSU is one of the best schools in the country that provide professional graduate programs for the adult student group. Its large number of professional degree programs, combination with traditional brick and mortar, and mission make it an attractive and worthwhile choice.


John

http://www.nova.edu/cwis/ia/alumni/alumni_maps.html

 

I am willing to wager that you will not find a single Ph.D. from Pepperdine (USNews "top tier" national/doctoral university) holding any kind of faculty postion at any college or university. Why? Because Pepperdine, to the best of my knowledge, does not grant Ph.D.s. It's doctoral programs are restricted to pre-professional Ed.D.s, Psy.D.s and J.D.s.

Now look at Nova. What doctoral degree titles does it offer? According to my Peterson's 'Graduate Schools in the U.S., 2001' it offers: Psy.D., Ed.D., Au.D., Dr.O.T., Dr.Sc.P.T., D.M.D., O.D., D.O., Pharm.D., D.B.A., D.I.B.A., D.P.A., J.D. and Ph.D.

What subjects does it offer Ph.D.s in? Clinical psychology, oceanography, CIS, CS, computing technology in education, information science/systems and dispute resolution.

What can we conclude from this information? That Nova is oriented very strongly towards preprofessional and occupational education at the advanced level. The traditional arts and sciences subjects are conspicuous by their absence.

Compare that to Berkeley, where you can do Ph.D.s in ancient history and Mediterranean archaeology, Asian studies, Romance philology, anthropology, astrophysics, Czech, Hindi-Urdu, geophysics, art history, linguistics, Malay-Indonesian, mathematics, molecular and cell biology, music, Near Eastern religions, paleontology, philosophy, physics, Sanskrit... and a hundred more like these.

Even in the professional schools you see the pattern continued: Berkeley's school of environmental design offers a Ph.D. but not a D.Arch. The Haas school of business offers Ph.D.s but no D.B.A.s.

Berkeley is very much a school dedicated to reproducing the professoriate. It produces scholar-researchers and grooms them for high level academic teaching positions. Nova Southeastern, on the other hand, seems to have chosen to produce practitioners. You would expect to find its audiologists, clinical psychologists, occupational therapists, dentists, optometrists, osteopaths, pharmacists, attorneys and D.B.A.s out there in the world of work, practicing their professions in actual applications.

If these kind of individuals found their way back into the academy, you would expect it to be often in the role of clinical faculty or adjuncts.

So I'm going to conclude with this: It is meaningless to say that one school is better than another unless you make clear what scale of measurement you are using and what expectations you are bringing to the table. Nova and Berkeley seem to occupy two ecological niches in higher education, and to my eye both are valid.

If you ask professors to make the rankings, is it any surprise that you find schools optimized to produce professors rated most highly? But if you asked practicing clinical osteopaths for their opinions, you might get a rather different list.

 

Bill,

Your points and conclusion are well thought out. I think you hit the nail on the head.
I agree that NSU is setup to educate practitioners.

I bet that within 6 months this topic will reappear and now we can just refer readers to your post and this thread in general.

John

 

You stated, "Berkeley is very much a school dedicated to reproducing the professoriate. It produces scholar-researchers and grooms them for high level academic teaching positions. Nova Southeastern, on the other hand, seems to have chosen to produce practitioners. You would expect to find its audiologists, clinical psychologists, occupational therapists, dentists, optometrists, osteopaths, pharmacists, attorneys and D.B.A.s out there in the world of work, practicing their professions in actual applications."

I've been following this subject for the past few days. This is a great summary. Thanks for your comments. Greatly appreciated.


------------------
David

 

Your comparison between NSU and UC Berkeley is appreciated. Your reference to Pepperdine's focus further validates your point. Would you (and other members) please comment on the following question:

It appears that NSU has more residency requirements than your typical DL program. Does that somehow allow their graduates (who are essentially professionals) to transition to academia?

Additionally, would you draw a similar conclusion about Capella, Walden and others with very limited residency requirements that you drew about NSU? -- i.e. Their primary purpose is to prepare professionals for working in their respective fields.



------------------
David

 

Bill,

I don't disagree with you. If you read the starred (*) part of my post you will see that I made essentially the same point.

-me

 

I will also voice my approval for Bill's assessment. This is exactly what everyone should understand before attending NSU. NSU has its place in society but people attending NSU or wanting to attend NSU should not be led into thinking a degree from the institution represents more than it really does.

I hope that NSU students and graduates don't use Tom's assessment as a reason for not improving NSU's condition. After all, I have heard people say that this reasoning (Tom's assessment) is simply used by schools who have low academic reputations to make themselves feel better. My motivation for such harsh rhetoric is that NSU doesn't have to be solely thought of as a school producing only non-academic industry professionals. I want NSU to excel and not be complacent. I want NSU to attempt to achieve a higher level of academic quality. If you compare the legions of Ph.Ds to those referenced in UMI you will find a large discrepancy. Contrary to drwetsh's previous assertions, this is mainly due to departmental politics that are driven by dissertation content quality (If you dispute this, call a faculty member and get his/her honest opinion!). If you search any academic database, you will typically find less than a dozen journal references attributed to NSU. If you compare that number with the number of students and faculty you will find this number appalling small. Are more journal articles necessary to improve NSU's reputation, probably not but as you can see from recent changes in the Business School's publishing policy, it certainly can't hurt.

As I said before, NSU is a great credentialing body. A NSU degree further enhances a person's career. I'm merely afraid that the stories I heard at graduation continue without remedy. For example, a person I graduated with had taught for many years at a large Big Ten satellite campus. Following graduation the person thought they would be automatically accepted for a full time position. They were wrong. While attending NSU they had built up a false sense of security. Rather than developing and refining their technical skills they assumed that by simply passing through the program the same level of academic respect, afforded to Ph.Ds from other institutions, would automatically be applied him/her as well - it didn't. The person's initial reaction was anger at NSU for not having the kind of impact on the potential employer that they had anticipated. They felt in a way that NSU had misled them into believing a NSU Ph.D. had academic parity with other schools. Back to my point, NSU provides solid and defendable credentials for industry professionals. However, those who think a NSU degree alone affords them unique rights and privileges typically afforded to other Ph.Ds, they are unfortunately mistaken.

Owl, Ph.D. (NSU 2001)

 

Owl,

Once again I see claims in your discussion that are unsupported and which I totally disagree with.

As follows:

YOU STATE: "If you search any academic database, you will typically find less than a dozen journal references attributed to NSU."

I did a quick search of one and found Nova with a very strong showing in the ERIC database. A significantly larger amount than a "dozen."


YOU STATE: "If you compare the legions of Ph.Ds to those referenced in UMI you will find a large discrepancy. Contrary to drwetsh's previous assertions, this is mainly due to departmental politics that are driven by dissertation content quality (If you dispute this, call a faculty member and get his/her honest opinion!)."

I have not once discussed UMI and dissertations in this thread. However, your statement about the quality of dissertations is now a hit against the NSU faculty for approving substandard dissertations. UMI is a voluntary process and if you have an RA dissertation you will not have a problem getting it published there. Some schools have students submit their dissertations as a matter of course for others it is totally voluntary (as is the case with UMI).

NSU is not lacking in academic rigor. I worked closely with the faculty when I was at NSU and did not get the viewpoint you are describing.

YOU STATE: "<snip...Rather than developing and refining their technical skills they assumed that by simply passing through the program the same level of academic respect, afforded to Ph.Ds from other institutions, would automatically be applied him/her as well - it didn't."

Interesting stories and you are buying into them. You mentioned a person needed to upgrade their tech skills and the NSU degree didn't help. What was the degree in? If a business Ph.D. was pursued and technical credentials were required I can certainly see why they didn't look at the degree as a plus. I bet there were other circumstances involved and NSU was the scapegoat for this person.

Anyway, you will have to argue this point with the many people who have traditional positions in academia and are afforded the status of their NSU degree.

In my case my employer instantly recognized my doctorate. I more than doubled my salary and have since been elected as a Technical Fellow. One of only 26 people in the company. The company is one of the large government defense contractors. In addition, shortly after graduation I wrote a technical article that was published based on my dissertation. I was immediately contacted by the publisher to write a book based on this work. The book was published and the publisher was CMP -- a major publisher of technical works.

I have also taught as an adjunct for a major research university. I had approached them
about being an adjunct and was specifically told by the Asst. Dept. Head that they get a lot of requests for adjuncts and that they wouldn't have considered me except that I had my Ph.D. I landed a 9 month teaching contract and my NSU credntial was the key.

At a smaller liberal arts college where I teach CIS courses, as an adjunct, they just recently underwent their SACS review. They needed to clean up their faculty. In our department one faculty member was hit. He had a Ph.D. in physics from a "prestige" school and spent his career working for IBM. He was excused because he didn't have the 18 graduate hours in CS, CIS, or a related discipline. (I question the SACS logic here but that is a different topic.) On the other hand my NSU Ph.D. had no problems and I am able to to teach all courses in the schools CIS curriculum.

As you can see my firsthand knowledge and experience with NSU is quite contrary to the stories you have heard. I am sure we can find stories from many other schools where students were not satisfied with their degrees. Articles exist about training Ph.D.'s more for industry (i.e. the NSU model) rather than academia because of the small job market in academia. There are even those who spent 10 years working on their Ph.D. full-time in the humanities only to find that they could not get work after graduation. Even when I was at NSU we had a student who came to study at NSU who had been a doctoral student at Temple University. Her "story" was that the department was so torn by academic infighting that she could not get her degree completed. She came to NSU and had to start over from scratch. NSU is not just a credentially service as you must complete the NSU curriculum in order to graduate. A credentialing service is something that just validates your work.


John

 

drwetsch,

I apologize for upsetting you. I guess I have been ragging on you simply because Andy and yourself seem to be the only NSU graduates on this thread.

Your story is further supporting my assertions. You have not disagreed with my points nor supported your counter claims with hard data.

Point 1: You are the exception NOT the rule. This is true isn't it? I congratulate you on your promotion and success. I have also had much the same professional and publishing success.

Point 2: I suspect your Ph.D. was further evidence to your employer that you are an intelligent, technically competent and highly motivated individual. The degree in-and-of-itself didn't get you there. Correct? My stint at NSU has shown many students to be quite the contrary (Most being faculty of various unrelated backgrounds searching for that all elusive Ph.D.)

Point 3: You are an AJUNCT professor at a small liberal arts college. This is where most NSU graduates teach full-time. Correct?

My experience at NSU was also very positive! I was able to find technically competent individuals with which to associate. Our consensus was that NSU can be best described as a credentialing body. Those passing through school who did not already have prior knowledge about the subject matter, but were never-the-less enrolled, failed to get through or at the least look a very long time to complete. I’m sure your experience was much the same. In addition, from what I understand about Nova back when you attended, things were even more chaotic.

NSU is a great place to learn but it has its limitations.

Owl, Ph.D. (NSU 2001)

 

Owl,

I am not upset I just disagree with your assertions. Contrary to your post I have presented more concrete evidence on my position than you have which is none.

On your points.

1.& 2.) We all typically succeed or fail through our own merits. The degree just opens the door. I have retained and fired other Ph.D.'s based on their performance. Essentially the NSU Ph.D. opened many doors for me that were previously shut. Since you haven't shared your success, degree major, or other pertinent information how can we validate your own claims of success.

3.) I am an adjunct because I choose to be. I have been offered fulltime positions but have turned them down. I enjoy teaching but do not need the money so yes I am an adjunct. Whether most NSU graduates are adjuncts I cannot agree because I see no data to support this. I have seen postings where NSU are fulltime faculty, deans, provosts, and presidents at many institutions.

Finally, I do agree with you that "NSU is a great place to learn but it has limitations." I think what we disagree on is what those limitations are. You will find limitations with nearly every school but the perspective to which you paint NSU is unsupported. My reason for being adamant here is that you are carrying forth the DL perception about NSU that has been heard many times before. However, I have never seen this perception substantiated. Based on the comments about your own success you have not seen them substantiated either. Myself and others have provided evidence that disputes every claim you have made while you have not presented any solid support for your position. If you want to change my mind you need to be more convincing.

John

 

Mr. Owl:

I am a proud Nova (MPA ’97) graduate as previous mentioned and I am looking forward in pursuing my DPA in the summer of 2002.

You need to stop bashing the school and get a life. I truly believe that you are not a true Nova graduate. If you are a true Nova graduate, you just blew $37k in tuition for a degree that perhaps may not be of value to you.

Follow my advice; mail your diploma back to Nova and make sure you write on it “VOID, REFUND DUE” because with an attitude like that, even if you would have graduated from Harvard, your attitude would have always been your downfall.

Mr. Owl, attitude is everything, which you failed to learn at Nova.

Here is Nova's Mailing address:

Nova Southeastern University
3301 SW 9th Ave
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33315