Getting a DEAC-Accredited Doctorate

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Rich Douglas, May 10, 2020.

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  1. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    I started a thread about this five years ago. But it was hijacked (naturally) by a very hostile jerk. But a good thing also happened and Neuhaus and I--after a bit of back-and-forth--really agreed on a number of points. I'd like to re-visit the idea, especially informed by Neuhaus' and others' inputs.

    Note: this will ignore the "I want to teach with a doctorate" concept. If you want to do that, go get an RA doctorate--professional or scholarly.

    First, let's make the distinction between professional and scholarly doctorates. While the traditional lines are drawn with degree titles, this is so blurred to be almost meaningless. In other words, lots of PhDs are awarded without actual scholarly work (either creating or testing theory). And a lot of other doctorates with professional titles (like the DBA and EdD) are awarded on the basis of scholarly work. So here it is: a scholarly doctorate contributes to the scholarship in one's field--again, theory-testing or theory-building). A professional doctorate makes a significant contribution to the practice in one's field.

    Next, I like the idea of earning a professional doctorate for practitioners. As we know, one gets a degree for two reasons: the educational experience and the degree itself. While I think the doctorate can be helpful in identifying one's self as an expert in the field, it isn't typically a job requirement and may not distinguish someone in an applicant pool. In fact, it might give some hiring managers the wrong idea. Still, a professional doctorate--especially for people with a lot of experience in one's field--can put you to the top of your field, at the very peak of its practice. In fact, you can even advance that practice through your research and subsequent work. In the latter parts of your career, you might just want to be a recognized expert--especially if you strike out on your own.

    Next, what about DEAC? There are several safe truisms about DEAC-accredited schools. They're less expensive, often come with less hassle, and are focused on working professionals. Plus, DEAC got into accrediting schools offering the doctorate explicitly for professional doctorates.

    What about the downside, the lower level of recognition and acceptance of degrees from DEAC-accredited schools? Well, as we know, that's changing (although the magnitude of that change has not been measured). Also, it matters less later in your career, which is where I'm really suggesting a DEAC-accredited professional doctorate can so some good. Finally, it is doubtful the doctorate will be the minimum qualification anyway--it can be a helpful add-on in some situations.

    I'm not interested in bashing for-profit schools. I'm also not interested in "RA or no way" extremism. But if I wanted to become an expert in my field--and I think I'm an expert in two in which a doctorate really helped--I'd give a professional doctorate from a DEAC school serious consideration.

    (Note: I've advised the Western Institute for Social Research over the past several years as it pursued ACICS accreditation and, later, DEAC accreditation.(WISR operated for decades with California Approval.) My help has been minimal and pro bono. I have no financial interest in their success, and I would NOT recommend enrolling at WISR until--and if--they are accredited by a recognized agency. This post has absolutely nothing to do with them.)

    (Note: Some posters have put me into the "RA or no way" box because of some of my critical comments about DEAC accreditation vis a vis RA. But that's because it is a complicated subject that does not lend itself to simple, declarative statements. I have no criticism for those who have taken that route to their degrees, but I've held at issue some of their "NA is the same as RA" nonsense that is not held by anyone except them.)
     
  2. newsongs

    newsongs Active Member

    While it's clear that NA degrees don't garner the respect for some in RA only circles, I agree that some NA doctorates work in business and other fields in particular. Some of the old CA schools that held only state approval led to licensure in psychology. (IE Cal Coast). I am glad the option is there to gain a doctorate - especially in fields where it is not the goal to teach at the university level. I'm sure more schools like U of the People will start with DEAC and go on to RA over time. It will be interesting to see how many of the remaining unaccredited CA schools fulfil the new mandate to become accredited - by the DEAC route.
     
  3. Maxwell_Smart

    Maxwell_Smart Active Member

    https://cps.northeastern.edu/faculty/joseph-curtin

    I love that he's at a regionally accredited non-profit with a Doctorate from California Coast.

    I've at times wanted to go on a hunt to see just how many people were in those kinds of positions with unaccredited and/or DETC/DEAC credentials, just for fun.
     
    newsongs likes this.
  4. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    This has been a real challenge. It's hard for many of these schools to fit the structure DEAC requires. Many schools considered ACICS, but that's been a debacle. Some schools have considered merging with other accredited schools. And some others, like Ryokan, have chosen to go out of business. A few seem to be working with DEAC, but the results haven't been realized yet.
     
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  5. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    A candidate for School Principal.
    Principals must have a very strong background in academics.

    So a candidate for Principal job will be credentialed teacher, will most likely have MEd degree.

    Will earning DEAC accredited EdD degree provide a competitive edge for the candidate?
    Possible choices:
    How will a candidate with EdD from the RA DL program from let's say Capella U compare?

    Not all RA degrees are equal in respect and utility. For-profit private schools may have a stigma, DL while made huge progress still may be perceived as inferior
    to the traditional B&M campus-based name recognized schools.

    There are multiple fronts to fight on, Non-RA is one, for-profit vs non-for profit is the second one and DL vs on Campus is the third one and top tier vs lower-tier
    if tier exists in the NA arena maybe the fourth one.
     
  6. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    Rich,

    What is a doctorate to begin with? It is supposed to be a level of education that trains the individual to conduct research at the highest level so he or she can make a contribution to either practice or academia.
    The question here is, do we have metrics that can help us to measure the real value of a DEAC doctorate degree? This could be number of publications in peer review practitioners journals generated by DEAC doctorate graduates, number of graduates getting high level positions that demonstrate that the individual is making contributions to the practice, number of DEAC doctorate graduates that are using these doctorates for professional advancement, etc.
    I think there is a potential of value in these degrees but also there is risk that these degrees just become revenue generators with no value to graduates. As DEAC schools are getting hit hard by the competition of RA schools that provide more and more distance education options, they might be just offering doctorates to stay alive but with no real value other than issuing degrees for personal ego boost.
    There is a tendency in the industry for credential inflation, this means people getting degrees not because they really need them but just to remain alive in a market saturated with people with academic credentials. If a person with a DEAC doctorate ends working as a customer service professional or in technical sales, what is the point?
    One starting point could be to go to linkedin and scan profiles of people with DEAC degrees and see if there is any career advanced that can be attributed because of these degrees. Then we can formulate an hypothesis and test it with data collected, this could be a good research article but I am not sure if people would be willing to take a negative result that states that degrees are just credential inflation boosters.
     
  7. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    My emphasis isn't on the acceptance of such a degree, nor its career-boosting potential. I'm talking about becoming a recognized expert in one's field, getting on top of its practice. I've offered an opinion. It would be interesting to see research on it. But you likely won't get that. I do believe one gets in return what one invests.

    Think beyond employment and employers.
     
  8. Garp

    Garp Well-Known Member

    That is interesting and what I am about to say is not necessarily fully or even partially in answer to it. Just some random observations. Often degrees themselves are "union cards" that allow you to work being carried along by your own innate qualities. There are people graduating with what were formerly known as "Regionally Accredited" doctorates whose dissertations are less than stellar and who could hardly be called scholars. It would be interesting to see how that number increases as you descend from the Ivy Leagues to the Waldens, Capellas and Argosys.

    Finally, there are always anomalies. Erik Erickson is a famous German-American Growth and Human Development expert. He is still studied today and his theories are used. He was a distinguished professor. He did not have a bachelors degree. If he had obtained a degree from Walden or Capella or a DEAC accredited institution, would who he was or his position be attributed partially to that (possibly inaccurately)? I suppose that is where you look for numbers or patterns.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Erikson
     
  9. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    Good post Rich. I'm going to snip out a few things for comment (not disagreement).

    During this time of semi-sequestration, I've been devoting lots of time to watching SpaceX's spaceship construction at Boca Chica on an extraordinary discussion board heavily populated by engineers and industry professionals. And countless engineering issues have arisen in the daily discussions, ranging from materials, through manufacturing processes (which impact everything else), plumbing for feeding cryogenic propellants to rocket engines, design of pressure vessels, mechanical structures and loading, to the heating and rigors of orbital reentry. And many more things like aerodynamics and computational fluid dynamics in all sorts of flight regimes from hypersonic (mach 25!) to stationary. All of these are applied problems that Elon Musk needs to solve to get to Mars, yet all of them revolve around intimate knowledge both of the technological state of the art and of fundamental physics.

    So I guess that my point here is that it looks to me like the PhD in engineering kind of blurs together seamlessly with the DEng (doctorate in engineering). It's easy to say that the PhD is "scholarly" while the DEng is "applied", but what does that distinction even mean when one is designing spaceships? One might say that the PhD culminates in publications that are published in the literature while the DEng culminates in solving an outstanding practical problem. But presumably the PhD in engineering's publications have practical engineering application, and the DEng's solutions are subsequently published in the same journals. A distinction without much of a difference in my opinion.

    My own opinion has long been that on the doctoral level, accreditation is virtually irrelevant. What matters is scholarly/applied reputation in whatever the field of the doctorate is. There isn't any guarantee that RA schools will have a stronger reputation than non-RA schools. (Though it's true in the vast majority of cases.) The NY Regents schools do supply us with counter-examples though. The American Museum of Natural History's doctoral program is huge in paleontology. Rockefeller University and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have each produced multiple Nobel Prize winners. Memorial Sloan Kettering is huge in the applied biomedical sciences. Each of these programs outshines any number of RA programs in the same subjects and professionals and employers know it.

    The problem with DEAC and ACICS doctoral schools isn't their accreditation, it's that none of them has anything like that kind of scholarly and applied clout. They don't produce anything like the same kind of results. Nobody hears about DEAC schools producing scholarly work that everyone in their field has to read to stay current, and nobody hears about them contributing in any similar way to applied work in their subjects. DEAC doctorates just seem kind of... generic.

    I still believe that DEAC should expect schools that want doctoral level accreditation to start emphasizing research (whether "pure" or "applied") and make the doctoral accreditation conditional on their doing that.

    Yes, I agree with that.
     
    Last edited: May 10, 2020
  10. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    Barry Johnson is the man when it comes to polarities and polarity management. There is no second person. He's on top of his (narrow) field. Barry earned a doctorate from the always unaccredited, well-regarded, and now-defunct International College in California. No one ever seems to question his doctorate, but they use his theories just the same.

    I get the concern that, for a lot of for-profit schools, the professional doctorate is just another degree, another rung on the credential ladder. But I'm not talking about the degree in that way. I'm talking about what you study, how you research, and what you make of it all. The doctoral process, I've found, can be a very helpful structure in all of that. It can help you shape (or re-shape) your professional identity. Again, get past the degree and consider the potential outcomes. Take power away from others (whom you fear will judge you harshly or slightly because of the source of your degree). Take it for yourself instead.

    The more you are subject to the decisions of others in your career, the more robust your degrees must be and the more you are affected by any gaps--real or perceived. But the more you are free of that, the more you can use a doctorate--regardless of its source--to become who you want to be, instead of what others say you are.

    Ironically, the most prestigious degree I have has had the absolute least impact on my career. (None, actually.) But it has had the most impact on who I am, and that is irrespective of the source university.
     
  11. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    If I was to choose to do a doctorate today, at this stage in my life and profession, it would be the DA at Harrison Middleton University. You could take that degree and shape it into what you want to become and receive a sound foundation in the process. If you need a doctorate to meet someone else's expectations, all the caveats still apply. But if you want to use the process to become something, that would be a wild ride indeed.
     
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  12. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    As an aside, ACCSC is a possible alternative to ACICS for schools that only offer up to Master's degrees, but their scope doesn't include doctoral programs, so for the purpose of this conversation they're not an option.
     
  13. chrisjm18

    chrisjm18 Well-Known Member

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  14. TEKMAN

    TEKMAN Semper Fi!

    A little off-topic, what happens to DEAC's Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) pilot program? I could not find any information after several years.
     
  15. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member


    Wow, Kennedy Western University was shutdown and degrees illegal to use in some states. University of Sedona is a Metaphysics school and uses the religious exemption law to grant degrees. The person below proudly displays this degree for an academic position:

    https://www.csudh.edu/social-work/facultystaff/lynn-harris

    I assume that Linda and Lynn got hired not because their PhDs but because other credentials but they are still allowed to display these degrees in the University web site.
     
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  16. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    I really thought we'd see a four-way split with the death of ACICS. Some schools going to ACCSC, some to DEAC, some to RA, and some would just disappear. But the Secretary of Education kinda goofed that up...for now.
     
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  17. felderga

    felderga Active Member

    Reading the extensive bio for Dr. Lynn Harris and the fact that she got her MSW from UCLA I don't she was hired for her doctorate in Metaphysics. On a side note... It's been over a decade since I've visited Sedona so now I'm curious about spending time there again.
     
  18. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    I agree, not because you can locate few faculty here and there with DEAC accredited doctorates, it means that the person got the job because of this doctorate. I personally know a professor that got a job as a Lecturer because his MSc and got a DBA from California Coast University but the position did not require the doctorate.
    However, the DBA might have helped him to differentiate himself from other candidates. Also, it is quiet possible that person was hired with the MSc and completed the DBA for personal development later.

    I personally see this type of doctorates as valid ways for personal development. If I am already a Lecturer but want to learn more about management and want to do a better job as a Lecturer, the degree is a good option.

    I am not sure how the DEAC DBA would be considered equal in Canada, if a comparative evaluation service can give a professional educator a certificate with a equivalency of a Canadian doctorate, for the holder wouldn't make much difference DEAC or RA. My guess is the same for any other foreign student that wants to use the degree in a foreign country.
     
  19. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

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  20. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

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