Thoughts on one year doctorates?

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Dustin, Jan 23, 2022.

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  1. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

  2. Courcelles

    Courcelles Active Member

    What a shitty article. I didn’t see a single legitimate one-year doctorate on there, just a hand wave at the garbage that is Breyer State.
     
  3. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    Is this an article written by AI? It's a bunch of gibberish.
     
    Maniac Craniac and Johann like this.
  4. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Probably AS - artificial stupidity. As if the real thing weren't enough!
     
  5. chrisjm18

    chrisjm18 Well-Known Member

    My opinion is not based on the article. I'm skeptical of any doctorate that can be completed in less than 2 - 2.5 years.
     
    Vonnegut likes this.
  6. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    When the Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities established the Union Graduate School, the minimum period of enrollment was 12 months. That didn't last long, however, and the period was increased to two years (and, much later, three). It was just too hard to fit in all the logistics and actions necessary to graduate, no matter how advanced or prepared the candidate was.

    One of my peers in the program did it in two years, as did a once-frequent poster on this board. But it was rare, and 4.5 years was the norm.

    I just don't see how anyone could do a legitimate doctorate in one year.
     
    RoscoeB, Maniac Craniac and chrisjm18 like this.
  7. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    Is the doctorate the new cash cow? What is the real value of the one year doctorate?
     
    Maniac Craniac likes this.
  8. Courcelles

    Courcelles Active Member

    How many true one-year doctorates, other than VUL’s actually exist from accredited schools, anyway?
     
  9. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    If time to completion is a quality indicator, UNISA degrees must be superb!

    "Hello. I'd like to know what Doctoral Studies cost, at UNISA."
    "$44,000 US in tuition, plus books and incidentals."
    "Ouch! I thought UNISA was --- more reasonable."
    "It's very reasonable. $2,200 yearly... for 20 years." (Johann - a while ago.)
     
    Last edited: Jan 24, 2022
  10. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    Like borrowing from a loan shark.
     
  11. chrisjm18

    chrisjm18 Well-Known Member

    If that's your conclusion, then sure!

    Everyone's completion time will vary. However most legitimate programs have a minimum duration. Even in the UK and SA where there's no coursework requirement, the minimum is typically two years. In the U.S, the coursework phase alone will run 1.5 to 2 years.
     
    RoscoeB likes this.
  12. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Yes. But UNISA is sometimes, shall we say, "UNIque." We have an esteemed, long-time member who has - I think - 12 years in, on his UNISA Ph.D. He is not alone. IIRC the 12-year record was set by another, long before our friend inadvertently equalled it. AFAIK, UNISA's cunctation (look it up) caused this. The delays were not due to anything cunctatious (look it up) on our friend's part.

    His story is what inspired my silly little piece for a 50-word contest. But there's a grain of truth in it, I think. And yes - a grain or two or six of BS perhaps - but that's the way I roll. Y'all know that.
     
    Last edited: Jan 24, 2022
  13. tadj

    tadj Active Member

    Johann,

    The eight-year PhD is closer to the norm in the U.S.

    Speaking of the time issue, I was recently reading "Good Work If You Can Get It: How to Succeed in Academia" , a 2020 book by Jason Brennan. He makes some interesting points when discussing the issue of time that it takes to earn a PhD and how that inevitably sends certain signals to employers, particularly in academia.

    He writes: "Nominally, most PhD programs in the United States are designed to last five years. Some fields might aim at four or six years instead. That’s the nominal time-to-PhD. In fact, the typical PhD student doesn’t graduate “on time.” CBS News reports the mean time to graduate to be 8.2 years. The Chronicle of Higher Education estimates instead that the median time to graduate is 7.5 years, with a median of 11.7 years in education, 9.2 in the humanities, 7.7 years in the social sciences, and just under 7 years in engineering, the life sciences, and the physical sciences."

    "The median graduate student takes seven and a half years to finish a PhD. In some fields—oddly, in the fields with the worst job prospects—they take longer. Longer is bad...."

    "Your CV tells a story. The time it takes you to earn a PhD tells a story. All things being equal, the longer you take, the more your CV communicates “inefficient, slow, undisciplined, unskilled, won’t succeed.” Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does. If you take five years to write a dissertation, you signal to potential employers that you won’t be able to earn tenure. Remember, hiring committees want to hire a colleague who they think can hack it. They want someone who clearly signals they can handle the workload with ease and grace. They want to hire someone who will publish consistently and at a high level, who will excel in teaching, and will do her part as a citizen of the university."

    "Unless it’s somehow obvious why you took so long, or unless you’re highly impressive in other ways, a long time-to-PhD will hurt you."

    "If you struggle to finish your dissertation, you probably aren’t going to succeed as a professor. You should consider quitting, or finishing but pursuing a nonacademic career. There’s nothing wrong with that. This job isn’t for everyone, and that’s fine. I realize that seems harsh. But consider: When you write your dissertation, you aren’t taking classes. You’ll either continue to be a teaching assistant for one class, or perhaps get to teach your own class. You’ll have almost zero responsibility other than writing your dissertation. That’s your full-time job. If you can’t hack that in a year, then how will you manage to be productive in research when—as an assistant professor—you also have to teach four to eight classes and perform service work, all without anyone mentoring you or holding your hand? In terms of responsibilities, grad school is the easiest time in your career. The years you spend writing your dissertation are the years with the fewest responsibilities. It doesn’t get better."

    "Isn’t the whole point of grad school to write a good dissertation? Answer: No, the point of grad school is to get a job. A dissertation is a school project. It’s a long school project that might take you a year or two to write (if you do it right) or many years to write (if you do it wrong), but that’s all it is. If our dissertation is merely a dissertation, maybe four people ill read it: you and your three graduate committee members. Don’t even count on your committee reading the whole thing."

    "The point of the PhD is to make you into a professor, and you don’t become a professor by perfecting the art of being a student. The students who professionalize early are also the students who transform themselves from students into researchers/teachers/colleagues. You succeed in grad school when you turn yourself into a professional."
     
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  14. TEKMAN

    TEKMAN Semper Fi!

    A Doctorate can be done in a year, just you have to quit your job, forget about family and life balance. You just spend 16 hours per day on the research including reading, writing, etc. :D
     
  15. chrisjm18

    chrisjm18 Well-Known Member

    Except you have no control over IRB approval. I stated in my applications that my intended data collection date was some time in Oct to Nov. 2020. After some revisions, IRB didn't approve my study until February 2021. Don't forget that you can only take so many courses in a semester, even the schools with 8-week sub-terms.
     
    Rich Douglas likes this.
  16. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

    This brings up an interesting point. If you already have your PhD and have published a few articles would writing a dissertation be a lot faster? Of course you'd need to start back in the literature review in your new field but assuming the methods used in the new field were similar to your existing doctorate and you were doing a research-only PhD I think you could potentially complete it a lot faster? This is just conjecture though, as I have completed 0 doctorates.

    @Rich Douglas - I know your DSocSci took several years, as did your PhD (and if I'm remembering correctly your PhD focused on higher education and your DSocSci thesis on a human resources topic?) Would you say you saved any time on the second doctorate because of the experience you brought from the first one?
     
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  17. Countertenor

    Countertenor New Member

    I wondered this as well.
     
  18. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    If you can write a dissertation that makes an original content to the body of knowledge for your given discipline in one year then I say, go for it.

    If anything, the US has long departed from the spirit of the doctorate by turning it into a Masters degree with a really long thesis at the end of it.

    The outcome of a research doctorate is the dissertation which follows, wait for it, research. Your doctorate, research type we're talking now, should take exactly as long as it takes for you to complete your research, write it up and defend it in front of a committee. Now, it obviously isn't that simple. You likely need additional coursework before you're ready to undertake the research. I get it. But my point is that a doctorate is not like a bachelors degree where you go in with a loose but generally understood deadline in mind. It should be based on the quality of the product not just based on time served (C's get degrees, after all).

    It's a reason why I also really like the PhD by publication. If you're writing numerous articles and being published in peer reviewed journals you're already doing the thing that most aspiring "traditional" PhD grads will be doing after they wrap up that dissertation.

    I've seen some of these DBA programs, particularly from schools that don't really have full blown business schools, and I have to say that they often resemble more of an enhanced MBA than anything I'd slap a "doctor" title onto.
     
  19. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    UNISA is notoriously slow in almost all matters. This, I believe, was Johann's point.
     
    Tireman 44444 likes this.
  20. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    My first took about 8 years (cumulative). My second took nearly 7. Both done part-time while working.
     
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