Is JD a doctorate level?

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: According to the ABA.....

Cynical doesn't begin to describe it. Is there a word that expresses a concept well beyond cynical?

The question, Dave, is whether what I describe doesn't exist but for a few cases. I'm just sayin' here that that's the system, I've seen it and lived it, at least vicariously. It's not like there aren't a boat load of honest PhDs out there who, when pressed, would admit it as well. It's not like I don't hang around a few PhDs, working in academia as I do and sleeping with a former inmate of the system for the last 17 years, and the great majority of them--including my bed partner--say the same old stuff: "Yeah, than &%$@ system, they don't care about the students, except to further their own careers...leave us hangin' around those ivory towers forever to teach the kids in UG...bare sustistence living...part-time coursework...joke classes...etc..."

I've spoken with one fellow who received his PhD from flagship state university who was completely dissolusioned with PhD work: "Mike (my real name), this stuff is easier than undergrad!"

I heard CalDog say that you must be obsessed to get a PhD. That is true enough, no doubt about it. But it is not because the coursework is full time or because it's difficult to get the passing grades. It's because the professors force you into various part-time duties while you're studying and make up so many little secret handshakes you must learn. It's becuase you don't have enough time to study full time because you're grading papers for three sections of freshamn classes with 25 students in each, it's because the whole convoluted process of latching onto an advisor who will actually show you the secret password to opening up the dissertation/faculty review door is based on about 1 part merit of the given student and 10 parts politics and cronyism. It's because the system is set up to provide cheap labor for universities and leisure time and accolades for the professorate. They gotta find some way to keep you hanging around for a half dozen or more years. But it ain't about rigor.

(for the record, my wife is not bitter over her 5 years in the system, but she readily acknowledges that the coursework is a part-time joke--just utter hoop jumping balderdash.)

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: According to the ABA.....

I understand this sentiment and it is a shame that story ends that way. However, most professors do care about students and themselves. Those who don't care about students are the exceptions, in my opinion. In the end, one can't judge a group by a few cases and ascribe groupwide attributes to a few cases by virtue of their membership in the group.

Dave

 

Re: J.D./M.D. vs Ph.D.

This is true in general, but there are also hundreds of faculty in business schools with a JD as their doctorate, many are department heads. As a matter of fact, I was just corresponding with one such fellow two days ago: head of the Marketing department for an AACSB accredited state university business school, and his only graduate work is a JD. There are hundreds more in small teaching colleges. It also helps to have a business masters, which is why I'm pursuing one and eating up the savings to do it.

 

I think you are missing the point here. I believe most of people in this forum would agree with me that the main difference between a Ph.D. and a J.D. is the dissertation. It doesn't matter how many credits you take for your J.D. You can obtain 180 credits if you want. But without that dissertation, You can only call yourself an ABD, like the case with your wife. By the way, sorry about what happened to your wife.

 

What about the British PHDs?

They are usually three year research only programs.

 

Re: Re: Re: Is JD a doctorate level?

I want to make sure that I understand you correctly. Under your scenario, would a person with an Ed.D from Columbia or a person with a DPA from USC be paid at the same level as a person who has a MAED or a MPA because they did not contribute an "original" contribution to the field?

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: According to the ABA.....

I know two Ph.D.s in my neighborhood: one from CIT in electrical engineering and one from a national university in physics. Both of them completed their master+doctorate in three years. They already knew what they were going to write for their dissertation before entering the program. What can I say, some people just born that way.

 

For a research (dissertation-required) doctorate, it is true that you are only an ABD without the dissertation. However, for the professional (non-dissertation) doctorate, one can still be a doctor without the dissertation. Try telling your physician that he/she is "not a real doctor" next time you visit the hospital/doctor's office.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Is JD a doctorate level?

Those degrees are equivalent to the Ph.D. if they include a dissertation, which is part of the doctoral process. Sometimes applied "projects" are the output of the doctoral process. Of course, there is no small debate about whether the doctoral process should focus on theoretical or applied research questions, but the doctoral process is essentially the same in either case. Nearly all DBA and DPA programs follow the same model as the Ph.D., and Ed.D, etc. programs.

Doctoral programs are exothermic, so to speak, in that they release heat and light in the form of research output. Masters programs and the JD are endothermic, because they absorb the heat and light of the research produced by doctoral programs and the research community. Neither classification is "good" or "bad" by any objective sense, but they do have different roles in higher education.

In short, in the university setting, pay legitimate "academic" doctors according to their credentials and pay others according to their lesser, credentials.

Dave

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: According to the ABA.....

Dave:

I should be more precise in my posts. It's not so much the professors, it's the system at research universities. Some professors hate the system and what it does to grad students and forces professors to do to attain tenure. But the research university gauntlet is pretty much what you must run if you want a recognized PhD. Most professors at smaller teaching colleges and non-research-obsessed universities care very much about students. I work for two such places (a CC and a small, private university). Many professors in the academic underclass at big research universities (i.e., those who actually teach undergraduate students) care a great deal about their students as well--but they are trated like pariahs by the tenured upperclass.

Most graduate students start the process with catholic tastes and intellectual curiosity and the desire to profess their knowledge and change the world. Instead, they are thrust into a system that seems almost calculated to make them cynical and teach them very little about passing on knowledge to anyone who can do anything with it--that exothermic thingie.

They're first disilliusioned by the grading system and the coursework, in which if you show up, you will pass the class ("pass" defined as "B"). Then, they notice that no matter how self-congratulatory the song-and-dance routines were about the "extreme rigor of the program" when they were recruited, that the work just isn't all that challenging--it's often less challenging that the workload back at their dinky undergrad school. Some stop caring or trying, recognizing that the coursework is a stalling tactic to keep them around for a while.

They're always told that there's no way you can possibly expect to work on the side while pursuing graduate studies, being that they will take up at least 80 obsessive hours a week. But of course they're then given jobs teaching teenagers (assistantships) or mopping the lab (fellowships). And they work cheaply.

When they finally reach the dissertation stage after four or more years of part-time studies, they've only taken 20 or so courses and they realize they really don't know much. They start to wonder, given that at the end they're told to research some arcane and razor thin sliver of knowledge, and given their still thin knowledge of the subject, how they're supposed to share anything of value with the world. If they run this final gauntlet, finish the dissertation and then get the plum assistant professorship in academia, they're then told that they must publish at least a half dozen papers or so in the next handful of years, or they can forget associate, they can forget tenure. They're told that tenure does not go to those who spend too much time with students except inasmuch as those students are helping you to produce the articles. So they quickly learn that they must ignore undergraduates and produce articles in journals that are read--if at all--by eight people in the world. And to think, they started out wanted to share their knowledge, change the world. And now they spend the rest of their lives writing on the economy of Kamchatka in the period between 1600 and 1650. Exothermic, indeed!

 

This is exactly the reason why they are called J.D./M.D., but not Ph.D. In my earlier post, I was simply trying to distinguish a J.D. from a Ph.D.

 

I don't know why "doctor" necessarily implies dissertation. However, if you want to say the average lawyer--such as me--must call themselves "ABD", then I suppose that's fine. If you want to say that your typical ambulance chaser is a different animal from your typical PhD, then I'm on board.

However, I'll differ with you if you also lump in your typical academic with a JD-only into your "ABD" category. A great number of attorneys produce a great deal of scholarship and original research while in law school or after the fact in academia. These are published in law reviews, appellate judicial decisions, lawyer's appellate briefs (which I know are anything but brief, habving done appellate work myself), or in many academic journals, usually the business, sociology or policial sciences ones. This research may be more rigorous and even quantitative and scientific (read--if you can--Professor/Judge Richard Posner's work on law and economics for a good example) than the average research produced by the average PhD. There is nothing particularly unique about a dissertation vis-a-vis the academic research that follows. The latter's the same activity as the former. It's just research. Usually the dissertation is pretty clumsy compared to what follows. So if you want to go to the local state university, walk over to the business department and find a JD-only or the law school and tell them there's something about their lack of a dissertation that makes them inferior to the PhDs in the next building over, they'd be quite right to laugh at you. They've all published extensively, in scholarly journals and in producing books, unless they're academic neophytes (but of course, if those new ones haven't published by the time you visit again in a couple years, they won't be there to greet you).

So the point is, if a person's a published academic, they're an academic, and whether they did a clumsy and naive dissertation 20 years before is pefectly irrelevant to their academic distinction today. The sheer volume of publishing both from the PhDs and JDs who manage to get tenure at a research university would pile a mountain of paper over their paltry PhD dissertations. One you get to the tenured level of professordom, there's no surviving reason for the distinction. This could be the unspoken rationale behind the ABA's awkward comparison.

(By the way, thanks for your kind words, my wife came a class or two short of ABD, and don't sweat it, she's not bitter at all, no hard feelings, it's just that she got a good look at the system and thought: "What's the point?" So she got out.)

 

Your kind of getting towards my view. The word "doctor" should apply to an expert in the subject field as shown through coursework and research. The "PhD" should, IMHO, imply completing a dissertation.

 

I never deny the fact that J.D. is a doctoral degree. But it’s a professional doctorate. J.D. is a doctoral degree because our education system makes it to be one. In the country where I come from, law school is a four year full-time program beyond high school. Upon graduation, one receives LL.B. degree (approximately 148 credits mainly in law) and is allowed to take the bar exam and practice law. They too spend tones of hours writing research papers for their classes. Can you honest say their LL.B.s are inferior than your J.D.s? It’s just that they don’t spend another four years studying for GE and non-law related subjects. Therefore, J.D., being a doctoral degree, is more of a form than the substance, and hence, in my view, not comparable to Ph.D.

 

A doctor is simply an expert in their chosen field of study. PERIOD!!!!!!! Now the field of study will determine the degree one chooses to pursue. Professional pursue professional doctorates and the theorist choose PhD's The dissertation requirement before one can be considered a doctor was simply made up by a theorist to justify the lack of practical usefulness of their degree.

 

This is absolutely true, but it is a professional doctorate because it prepares one for licensure in a given field, not because of any inherent inferiority.

Quite true, though the "fault" really lies with the ABA, as was pointed out by another poster.

Of course not, their degrees may be superior considering they spend an extra year of full time specialized studies on them.

Not comparable. A different thing. Like apples and oranges. But not like apples and golden apples! (as I think is the errant opinion of most PhD holders). Yes, the PhD must produce original research and this takes the form of 50,000+ pages of peer-reviewed work. They take at a minimum about 20 or so specialized classes. Their coursework is probably not as strenuous as the JD work, however, at least in terms of grading and work requirements. The JD takes 30 or so specialized classes. But no dissertation.

However, again, there is nothing special and wonderful about a doctoral dissertation that creates a bright line between it and normal academic publishing. Like I said in another post, if you go into the business department of an AACSB school and talk to the the average tenured professor with a JD, you will find that he has produced many times more research and scholarship than is contained in the average doctoral dissertation. When you enter another office and ask the typical PhD about their dissertation, they'll likely blush and tell you they didn't know much back in grad school. That silly old dissertation isn't much to crow about compared with the research they're doing now.

So what is the thing about the dissertation that makes it so much of a distinction when comparing tenured academics, one with a professional doctorate and one with a doctorate in philosophy? Little or nothing. I can show you myriad attorney/scholars who are performing complex quantitative research that would spin the heads of the average PhD. I mentioned Posner earlier. Read and grasp his work if you can.

If the only difference is the research and publishing--and that is pretty much the only difference, other than the JD's more extensive postgraduate coursework--then there is really no meaningful difference between a JD academic and a PhD academic at a research university. So I want to draw a line--a bright one--between tenured JD-only academics who do a lot of scholarly research and the average lawyer you see in those personal injury ads who do none. The former is a scholar and has typically published extensively or they would not have received tenure. In fact, they will have published enough--given the tenure process--that any meaningful distinction between their JD and another's PhD will likely have disappeared. No one can convince me that my law professors published less than the average PhD. They probably published more.

 

LL.B. is still that standard law degree in Canada and the United Kingdom.

 

LL.B. is still the standard law degree Canada and the United Kingdom.

The J.D. is like the M.D. Both hold the title of "Doctor", however, neither are traditional doctoral degrees.

In Canada, to obtain admission to a LL.B. or M.D. program, one requires at least 2 years of undergraduate study. This may change to 3 or 4 years (requiring a degree).

So, theoretically, it is possible to be a lawyer or physician (notice how I didn't say doctor) with about 5 years of academic study after high school. This does not include the internship or articling, but I think you get the point.

Is a J.D. or M.D. a doctorate? I suppose so, but let's not give credit where credit is not due.

If someone possessed a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and was a Professional Engineer (P.Eng.), this would be the path in Canada:

B.Eng. (4-5 years)
M.Eng. (2 years)
Ph.D. (4-5 years)
"Articling" (4 years)

Total: 14 - 16 years (Age 32 - 34)


Physician

2-4 years of undergraduate education
3 years medical school
2-4 years of "internship" depending on specialty

Total (7 - 11 years) (Age 25 - 29)

I don't think there is any comparison from an academic perspective.

 

Re: Re: Re: Is JD a doctorate level?

Maybe, but most JD students must submit and present a lengthy research paper in order to graduate. The writing requirement varies from school to school, but most students at my school completed papers that were 40-plus pages in length. One student submitted a 74 page (12 chapter) research paper with about 400 notes, a table of contents, and table of authority. Another student’s paper came in at just under 90 pages.

The downside is that unlike PhD students, all this research and writing only earns the law student about one to four credits (depending on the school).

 

Perhaps in Canada they require a separate Masters prior to entering PhD studies, or perhaps this is something unique to engineering there. But such is not the case in most PhD programs in the U.S. The MS or MA is simply a point along the way to the PhD. It's contained within the 4-5 year minimum for getting the PhD, not in addition to it. My wife, for example, studied pure theoretical mathematics at the PhD level. Her field was one that was far more scientific and rigorous that the nastiest of engineering programs--yes, even electrical, which most mathematicians would refer to as "applied nonrigorous crap", such is the arrogance of those who study the hardest of the hard. Yet she tells me to this day the coursework, had someone been of a mind to, could have been completed with little effort. Her experience is the norm, not the exception, based on conversations I've had with many PhDs (I work in small college academia).

These are important points, and take some of the steam out of the argument for the superiority of the PhD. Another issue that I addressed in a prior post was the part time nature of the PhD. They are simply that, there is no way around it. They spend a great deal of time doing things that are not related in any meaningful way to advanced studies in their field (teaching undergrads introductory courses, gopher for professors' research, glorified broom pushing). Once a person is in a graduate program, they take three courses a semster rather than 5 or 6. So comparing the length of time to complete a PhD to the length to complete a JD or an MD is truly apples and oranges. So what if the time required for completion less with the professional degrees? It's only because they're taking their medicine in a concentrated dose rather than watered down. Am I saying PhD studies are watered down and part time, and that's why it takes so long to complete them, and thus time should not be a factor in comparisons? Yes, that's absolutely what I'm saying, and I'm right on this point.

The inflated figures for average time to complete a PhD--posted elsewhere here--are a result of numerous factors, most of them institutional and having nothing to do with rigor. Many people thrown into those averages are those completing the PhD remotely while teaching somewhere ABD. If the bar allowed attorneys to practice before completing their third year and a significant number left law school and finished their third year remotely, a class at a time, I suppose the average lawyer might take 5 or more years to complete a JD. But would that make it more rigorous?