Will universities hire professors with an Ed.D. instead of a Ph.D.?

Discussion in 'Education, Teaching and related degrees' started by 29dave, Oct 18, 2011.

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  1. 29dave

    29dave New Member

    Hello forum members, I wanted to tap into your expertise on this topic. I am currently pursuing my M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction from the American College of Education. My dream is to be a university professor someday. (I am aware that this is a tough field to get into...) Is it reasonably possible to get a university professor position with an Ed.D. instead of a Ph.D.? I am asking this because I would like to get my doctorate online, and the only affordable CHEA-recognized online education doctorates that I could find are the Ed.D. degrees from Aspen University, Liberty University Online (which actually does have residency requirements), and William Howard Taft University.

    So... Long story short... Would universities hire an aspiring professor with an Ed.D. instead of a Ph.D.?

    Thank you for your assistance,

    Dave
     
  2. StefanM

    StefanM New Member

    The answer...it depends. You absolutely must have a regionally-accredited degree to teach in most institutions, however, so LU would be the only real option on that list.

    That being said, if you want to be a university professor, I would recommend doing a program in residence.
     
  3. Randell1234

    Randell1234 Moderator

    I agree, if you want to be a full time professor, an online degree will certainly not help. I would look at something with a residency and is a B&M school such as Liberty or Nova, not UoP, Walden, or Capella. Like it or not, it will not be cheap. If you really want to be competitive, take a traditional route to a PhD/EdD
     
  4. Jonathan Whatley

    Jonathan Whatley Well-Known Member

    Find a subject area, or a manageable set, you could live in for years.

    Live in it and become a good scholar in it. Research, publish, be active in associations and committees and stuff. If there's an applied profession in the field associated with the subject area, something your graduates might go on to do - teaching kids, or adult continuing education, working in a business, volunteering in an agency, etc. - try doing some of that.

    Do focus on both becoming good in your subject and qualifying as and becoming good as a university-level teacher. But weigh the first at least a little bit more.

    What do you see yourself teaching?
     
  5. 29dave

    29dave New Member

    Wow, thank you for the prompt replies... I would like to teach teaching methods. I would like to help teachers become better at writing, planning, and delivering instruction. I could teach equally well online or in person.

    I guess I've just been spoiled by the affordability and convenience of the online master's degree program I'm currently taking. For me, moving to another state isn't really an option. It sounds like Liberty University might be my best bet for the doctorate.....
     
  6. Jonathan Whatley

    Jonathan Whatley Well-Known Member

    As a general rule. If that degree would be the main thing that would qualify you for the position in the first place. If you were, say, an advanced practice nurse with an MSN looking to teach nursing, an early-retired executive looking to teach management, an adjunct already in at a school with an inside track to a full-time job, etc., there are plausible situations any baseline-credible doctorate, RA, GAAP, in many cases NA - would certainly help. It wouldn't itself make you, and if you didn't have that other strong claim in your subject, it wouldn't have gotten you there.
     
  7. Randell1234

    Randell1234 Moderator

    My response if in the context of "not a retired exec or someone on the inside or in a high need area like nursing".
     
  8. Jonathan Whatley

    Jonathan Whatley Well-Known Member

    Something else: In the traditional graduate school environment, if you were interested in postsecondary teaching, your faculty, especially your advisor (and especially at the doctoral level, but not exclusively), are supposed to take the lead in mentoring you, helping you step through research assistantships, teaching assistantships and possibly contract adjuncting, helping you find your footing within the academic community, etc.

    You can't entirely generalize about short-residency or online graduate degrees. Some, like the old-school Union Institute & University Ph.D. program, or South African, British, Australian or other international research doctorates, are all about the mentorship, and though the natural opportunities to work as a TA and stuff on the same campus may not be there, a motivated student and advisor can build those in. Some nontraditional graduate programs have strong, active, continuous enough graduate faculties unimpeachable in their fields, even at the top of their fields, (though the fields may be niches, like Embry-Riddle in aviation, Bellevue in Human Capital Management, or Saybrook in humanistic psychology). And there's the potential to do quite a bit with that.

    Other nontraditional graduate schools seem to have relatively transient faculties, logging in and doing what's needed to teach each individual online course and see each individual student through their thesis or dissertation supervision, and I'm sure for the most part they take it seriously and keep up in their fields, and they're probably much more likely to be a working field-level practitioner by day or a retired practitioner and they could add a lot from that, etc. But for some of the more latent functions of graduate school, this class of online university may barely even seem to be trying.

    And maybe, for most of their students or graduates, that's okay. But most aren't going to be in the mix for full-time academic positions, where that doctoral degree is their main qualifying thing.

    Conventional wisdom among the sort of people who hang out in places like degreeinfo would tend to put most of the for-profit schools teaching at the doctoral level, like Phoenix, Capella, Northcentral, Walden, and Jones International, and many or most of the DETC or ACICS schools with doctoral programs, in this category. I've always had a relative soft spot for Walden, but it's for doing things here and there that it really shouldn't surprise me a doctoral university is doing, like publishing this journal.
     
  9. BrianH

    BrianH Member

    29dave
    What job do you have now?
     
  10. 29dave

    29dave New Member

    I'm a school teacher..... I teach kids now, and it's great, but eventually I would like to teach teaching methods courses. I am fascinated with all aspects of teaching, from lesson planning to classroom management. I have no desire to be a school administrator.
     
  11. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    I'm going to disagree (slightly) with this this answer. The answer, really, is "yes." Universities would, in fact, hire an EdD over a PhD. The proof of this is found on the faculty pages of every university website on the planet. There you will find example after example of faculty members with EdD degrees. During their interview processes they were undoubtedly up againist other academics with PhDs and they (the EdD candidate) obviously won that battle.

    What caused them to win? Was it their personality, that winning smile? Was it their research interests? Their dissertation advisors reputation in the field? Who knows? Empoyers hire people, not the letters that follow their names.
     
  12. 29dave

    29dave New Member

  13. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    In general, that has been what I noticed too. There would seem to be at least a few explanations for that, not just that schools prefer PhDs over EdDs.
     
  14. Sea~~Monster~~

    Sea~~Monster~~ New Member

    Stating the obvious here: in the field of education, sure, an Ed.D. will count a lot.

    It won't be the same thing in other faculty departments.
     
  15. Bruce

    Bruce Moderator

    Not necessarily.....one of my psychology professors at MSPP has an Ed.D. from Columbia University Teacher's College, because that's where Columbia houses their clinical psychology department. No idea why.
     
  16. StefanM

    StefanM New Member

    A lot of counselor supervision doctorates are EdDs as well.

    But the general point stands. An EdD in the field of instruction will do much more than an EdD trying to get a position in an outside field.
     
  17. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Sure, but can't the same thing be said for someone who holds a PhD in Education?
     
  18. Bruce

    Bruce Moderator

    I know the University of Nebraska-Lincoln offers a doctorate in education via DL, with the choice of a Ph.D. or Ed.D.
     
  19. StefanM

    StefanM New Member

    Yes, that's why it was "stating the obvious," but we don't commonly see people obtaining PhDs in education to teach in other fields. EdDs, however, are often seen outside of education departments.
     
  20. journi

    journi member

    Hi, i think some universities are hiring Ed-D and some are hiring Ph-D professors. All universities have their own rules and regulations.
     

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