Great Falls teen earns Doctorate degree

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Dustin, Mar 19, 2021.

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  1. TEKMAN

    TEKMAN Semper Fi!

    Definitely, she is the field that requires a lot of experience to land a professorship. Her NA degree might not get her further...maybe her best is starting looking to a traditional AACSB Ph.D. in Business Administration, then she properly will end up good position after 4 years along with research and teaching assistance experiences.
     
  2. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

    No Master's.
     
  3. Vonnegut

    Vonnegut Well-Known Member

    There's way to much speculation and judgement in this thread. Regardless of the education level, we're still referring to teenage child. Everyone, please just wish her well.
     
  4. Steve Levicoff

    Steve Levicoff Well-Known Member

    With all due respect, Vonnegut, I must cordially disagree.

    From the article cited in this thread's original post:

    GREAT FALLS — Meet Dr. Kimberly Strable. On Thursday morning, at just 17 years old, this Great Falls teen successfully presented her dissertation defense virtually to receive her Doctorate in Business Administration with an emphasis in Global Leadership from California Intercontinental University.

    "I'm the third youngest in world history to ever get a doctorate in any subject, the youngest in all world history to ever get a doctorate in business and the youngest in American history to get a doctorate in any field,” Strable said.

    "I was just so happy and glowing. So relieved because it's been such a long journey and it's always been a next step and a next step. To finally recognize I am now officially a doctor, super amazing,” said Strable.

    Her education is already paying off: "Right now I'm actually working on some legal battles, discrimination I faced because of my age. So that's a really interesting part and I've actually applied some of my knowledge and I'm working on that. But after all that wraps up, I plan on trying to get into executive management,” she [sic] Strable . . .​

    (Reminder: This article appeared on the very day she purported to defend her dissertation.)

    In light of her own platitudes, I don't care if she's a "teenage child" (and, at 17 years old, I wouldn't call her a child at all, but rather a young woman). Indeed, I wouldn't care if she were a five- or ten-year-old child. The fact is that she purports, "I am now officially a doctor." She's already fighting "legal battles" against others, planning on being an executive manager, calling herself "super amazing," and making apparently false claims about being the youngest person to accomplish these things.

    In short, her age is quite irrelevant. When the rubber meets the road, she is simply a troll at any age.

    Come to think of it, she is the youngest troll to come along in a while. Or Doctor Troll, as it were. Golly gee whiz, that is super-amazing! :rolleyes:
     
  5. Steve Levicoff

    Steve Levicoff Well-Known Member

    An afterthought, since I don't want it to look like I place all the blame for this bullshit on Kimberly:

    According to her LinkedIn page at (1) Kimberly S. | LinkedIn, here is her education:

    California Intercontinental University
    Degree Name Doctor's Degree
    Field Of Study
    Business Administration with an emphasis in Global Leadership
    Grade 3.98
    Dates attended or expected graduation 2019 – 2021

    Montana State University-Northern
    Degree Name Bachelor of Business Administration - BBA
    Field Of Study Small Business Administration/Management
    Grade4.0
    Dates attended or expected graduation 2016 – 2019​

    Let's see if I'm reading this correctly: A DEAC-accredited "online university" admitted someone, regardless of her age, to its DBA program without a master's degree of any type, and allowed her to finish her program and allegedly earn a DBA in two years with only a previously earned bachelor's degree.

    What does that say about this school? (Never mind - that's a rhetorical question.) But I have to admit, it makes Kimberly no more sleazy than CIU. They were probably looking for some "super amazing" publicity but, in my mind, it simply makes them look like a mill. (Notice that I didn't say what kind of mill - get over it.)
     
  6. Courcelles

    Courcelles Active Member

    How is this even possible? A two-year post-Masters DBA would seem fast. And this place even publicly stats a masters is required for admission; https://www.caluniversity.edu/programs/doctorate/dba-global-business-and-leadership/
     
  7. chrisjm18

    chrisjm18 Well-Known Member

  8. Thorne

    Thorne Active Member

    https://web.archive.org/web/20170903075314/http://www.caluniversity.edu/admissions-and-aid/admissions-criteria/

    Two years ago, the requirements were:
    It is possible for schools to admit outside of those policies though.
     
  9. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

  10. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    DEAC schools in general are open admissions (anyone with a credit card can be admitted) and normally admissions are negotiable. Long time ago, when shopping for a DEAC degree, I was harassed to register with phone calls, discounts, etc. The person enrolling you is probably on commission and can care less if you are 12, as long as your credit card clears you are in.

    I have completed DEAC 3 credit classes in one day. I took few at a known DEAC accredited school mainly to comply with cont ed hours for a professional association. It is quite feasible to do a doctorate in two years. The only challenger for her is the dissertation.
     
  11. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    Easy: she applied John Bear's advice from decades ago ono how one can negotiate with schools to bend requirements. More likely than not, her particular hustle was to play up the whole teenage prodigy thingy. It's a bit hollow, because she is not in fact the youngest or the first to do that, but I can see how it can be enough to snag admission to a nonselective place like California Intercontinental University. I bet they were happy to latch on any kind of excuse (in all likelihood, her essay) to get their hands on tuition dollars without ticking off DEAC.
     
  12. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    Yeeah, well, this is a reasoned argument any boomer would make, or agree with. Any boomer, that is, who did not in fact get his undergraduate degrees mainly through portfolio (somewhat blazing the trail in sheer number of credits, and publishing an influential online guide to the process), followed by at-distance Master's, followed by a two-year-wonder run in another at-distance university. And, again, for anyone younger that 50, "distance" or "nontraditional" are full synonyms of "online". Meaning that your degrees from TESC, Vermont College, and TUI&U are, in fact, online degrees from online universities, even if they used postal trucks or carrier pigeons* to deliver messages in the days of yore. And frankly, in the days of yore, degrees from the likes of TESC, Vermont College, and TUI&U had reputation similar to or worse than "online" now, as "correspondence schools" - no matter how unfair. You as the lapsed DL expert know this better than most.

    Having that comprehensively taken care of, I have to question how well-thought Dr. Kimberly Strable's career-path is. Leadership doctorates are mostly not about giving someone usable subject-matter skills; they're more about leveling up existing ones. Getting a degree in itself just demonstrate your skill in getting degrees. Steve, whose doctorate is in the liberal arts (likewise, not very useful in isolation) did additional step of publishing a useful book in a narrow subject (evangelism and law? may be wrong, before my time), giving him a reputation as a niche expert. That's something to trade on. Also, he established a reputation as a niche expert, back then, on earning online degrees, likewise publishing the NIFI book and relentlessly posting on Usenet and later, this board. I thought Dr. Strable might do a bargain basement version of this and be an author-speaker-expert within the homeschooling... well, cult. That would be legitimate, as she does have real skills in getting good grades and earning degrees fast - a latter-day discount Levicoff. But she said it's not what she's after. What then? "I think I'll go into executive management" is not a career path, barring extraordinary luck or some major privilege.

    * refer to the official standard for implementing Internet using pigeons, IETF RFC 1194 " A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers", published April 1, 1990. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149
     
  13. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Goodness, I'll have to let my sixteen year old who's on track to get an Associate degree soon that he's in a cult. He'll think that's hilarious.
     
    SpoonyNix likes this.
  14. TEKMAN

    TEKMAN Semper Fi!

    Honestly, I think she is brilliant and have more accomplishment than me that she could land an Executive position at the age of 17. I am 37, have been working full-time for the last 21 1/2 years, from scrubbing corporate toilets (American Online, AOL in Reston, Virginia) to Middle-Level Management and Small Unit Leadership. I earned a degree from SMU, Georgetown, and now at Imperial College London....and I don't know how to break into the Executive Leadership position.
     
  15. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    I suggested Kimberly could be functionally a guru; that career is viable because there are enough cultishness in homeschooling circuit. In the same way, cryptocurrency is a cult - it doesn't mean there are no genuine tech or economic innovation an the heart of it. Or for more articulate example, check out "academia is a cult" article someone linked here recently.
     
  16. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Fair enough, but it's for that reason that I save "cult" for mind viruses with no redeeming underlying ideas, like QAnon.
     
  17. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    Executive position is very relative. You can just open a business tomorrow in Nevada for few hundred and become an CEO of your own company or work as a CEO for a family business. I learned that the real metric is salary, I am better of working as a simple programmer at Google making 200K+ than as CEO for a family business and making 50K.

    The DBA is not required to become a CEO, most CEOs don't have DBAs or even MBAs. These positions require someone with accomplishments, leadership and networks. A DBA is leadership from a DEAC school as some stated before, just shows that you are committed enough to earn a degree but the actual knowledge learned from these programs are not going to make you a leader. You don't become a leader by reading books and writing essays.
     
    Vonnegut likes this.
  18. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    Your accomplishments are great for someone at 37, you should feel proud of yourself. The real issue is that accumulating degrees is not longer the path to a successful career. 30 years ago, a masters degree from a good school like Imperial College was the ticket to a 100K plus job from the beginning.
    The internet is giving more access to education which is a great thing but also increases competition. If a 17 year old can get a DBA, imagine how a 50 year old would feel with his associates degree, the idea that everyone is entitled to earn a doctorate can be scary for some that are not used to a new world where people get DBAs at the age of 17.
     
    Vonnegut likes this.

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