Applied Doctorates - Tenure-Track Positions

I decided to create this thread because the "you have no chance of getting a tenure-track position with a professional doctorate" crowd is misinformed. Even though the degrees I will be using as examples are called professional doctorates, I am not including first professional degrees, such as the MD, DPT, PharmD, and JD. This thread will be for applied professional doctorates, such as the DHA, DHSc, DrPH, and DCJ. It will not include the DBA or EdD since those are somewhat common among professors. It will also not include community college professors since the minimum educational requirement is typically a master's degree.

These two professors below have a DScIT from Middle Georgia State University. While the DSc is usually equivalent to a PhD, MGA's DScIT program only requires a capstone, and the capstone papers are as short as 10 pages.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglas-malcolm-dsc-b6428848/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanrhobbs/

The professor below has a DFS.

https://www.ecok.edu/directory/cristen-clayton-0

The professors below have a DCJ. There are a number of them from PennWest, which happens to be ranked in criminology, so I won't be sharing them all.

https://www.nccu.edu/employee/cmaye1
https://hss.mnsu.edu/about/departments/criminal-justice-department/faculty-and-staff/matthew-loeslie/
https://www.usj.edu/faculty/john-watts-d-c-j/

The professors below have a DHA. There are many of these, so I'm not going to post them all. Honestly, I don't think there is a bias against DHA degrees among healthcare administration and similar programs. Some job ads specifically list the DHA as a qualifying degree.

https://www.uttyler.edu/directory/healthcare-policy-economics-and-management/thomas-maryon.php
https://www.depts.ttu.edu/onehealth/faculty/carrie-shaver.php
https://www.wichita.edu/profiles/academics/health_professions/Health_Administration_Advisory_Board/Kelly-Steven.php
https://www.eku.edu/personnel/jessica-l-hess-mpa-rhia/

The professors below have a DrPH. Based on my cursory research, there really isn't a bias against the DrPH in public health departments.

https://public-health.tamu.edu/directory/sansom.html
https://sph.uth.edu/research/centers/chppr/people/profile.htm?id=16d5cc82-142a-43c2-b43b-8e701ea42734
https://public-health.tamu.edu/directory/ferdinand.html
https://sph.tulane.edu/bios/lindsey-ho
https://nursing.ouhsc.edu/About/Faculty-Directory-Old/Profile-Details/julie-gordon-drph-cphq

The professors below have a DHSc.

https://sph.tulane.edu/sbps/megan-weemer
https://www.pacificu.edu/about/directory/people/kevin-rogers-dhsc-ma-mha
https://smhs.gwu.edu/faculty-research/debra-herrmann-dhsc-mph
https://www.rushu.rush.edu/faculty/mark-mcinerney-dhsc-rd

Note: In at least two cases, the professors were adjuncts at their current universities, and soon after they graduated with their doctorates, they were hired as assistant professors.

 

It is not that you can't, but the chance is slim. Also, the pay is not that good. Most people get a Professional Doctorate for their professions outside of academia. For example, Dr. Jonathan Hobbs' Associate Professor in Computer Science at Georgia Southwestern University salary is about $70K.

 

It's field dependent, but the academic job market is not good overall. Most PhD graduates will not get hired for a tenure-track position. I think nursing currently has the worst shortage of professors.

Ironically, computer science/IT is one of the higher-paying fields for assistant professors, but the pay varies by type of institution. Assistant professors at research universities tend to get paid more. The other higher-paying fields for new assistant professors are law, business, and engineering.

According to an NIH article, healthcare administration programs are normally housed in public health, health professions, and business departments. Healthcare administration professors in business departments get paid the most at the assistant and associate level.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9682474/

HB1 has an average salary, and if I'm not mistaken, it's for immigrants. OpenPayrolls has salaries for individuals at public universities, but the new assistant professors for 2024-2025 won't have their salaries posted until late next year or the year after. When Dr. Malcolm was a lecturer, he was getting paid $79k, which is very high for a lecturer.

 

I couldn't agree more, and for good reason.

The doctorate is designed to demonstrate one's ability to do original research that contributes to the field. Scholarly contributions AND those contributing to praxis. There is no reason someone with a professional doctorate doesn't meet all the criteria necessary, no reason that person cannot conduct valuable research AND teach.

That said, I still think there are pools of bias in places where the professional doctorate is not acceptable, where the PhD is held in esteem and is the expected degree. Funny, because I've read quite a few dissertations (and wrote one myself) where the PhD was awarded for professional, non-scholarly work. (And my DSocSci, often mistaken for a professional degree, was not. It was a scholarly degree in every way. There was no way I could have written a professional thesis vice a scholarly one.)

And so it goes....

 

Assuredly, there is still a preference for the PhD, and this is quite pronounced in psychology, where the EdD and PsyD are looked down upon. I think this bias persists throughout the liberal arts fields because they are inherently more theoretical. I'd like to know how the DEng is viewed among engineering departments. I've perused engineering PhD dissertations from a pretty good school; they were not theoretical, and I am not sure they added substantially new information to the body of knowledge. They were applied projects.

 

Some professors with a D.Eng.

(About seven on this page) https://catalog.morgan.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=25&poid=5648&returnto=1793
https://www.lsu.edu/eng/cee/people/voyiadjis.php
https://www.pnw.edu/people/masoud-fathizadeh/

 

I don't know, but I've seen professors teaching with a DTech degree.

 

Even adjunct positions are tough to get and they pay about the same as a Macdonalds' worker.

 

Associate professor of engineering with a DTech.

https://catalog.shsu.edu/undergraduate/faculty/

 

Note that a DTech degree is often a scholarly degree. Unless it's awarded by a polytechnic.

(Like everything else, these are not hard-and-fast rules and the lines are often blurred.)

 

It does appear that Purdue requires a traditional dissertation, and Claremont requires an applied dissertation. This also makes it difficult to categorize other doctorates as research or professional degrees. A DBA and EdD can either have a dissertation or an applied project. Most DHA programs seem to require a capstone/applied project, but University of Colorado Denver and Central Michigan University's DHAs require a dissertation. I noticed that some universities are putting "dissertation" in parentheses next to "capstone" or "applied research project," so the lines are blurred.

 

That is showing an H1B visa holder's salary, which can be much less than a US citizen's salary in the same role.
Edit: Actually, I just looked into it and this isn't true. Sorry. No delete function.

 

https://www.kent.edu/cae/ruben-del-rosario-deng

 

Ironic. The "MD, DPT, Pharm D, and JD" are all sufficient for tenure track positions in their respective fields. Indeed, these degrees are often mandatory for appointment.

 

This is why they were excluded.

 

Oh, no criticism intended.

 

My state school alma mater only offers three doctorates, an EdD in two flavors, an online Doctorate completion program for nurse practitioners, and a PhD in Biology with a focus on the Mississippi River ecosystem done at the schools field station a few hours from campus.

The graduate school has a very large number of MA, MFA, and MS programs however.

I graduated as recently as May, and through my entire time in the program, the grad school generally requires all students to conduct a capstone or research project to complete the MS and even some MAs. I believe the MFA's had to develop a project, do a recital, or some type of artistic work.

So doing a thesis regardless of degree seems reserved only for those students who have a project fall through for some reason. For those students writing a big boring thesis is seen as a way to salvage your degree and walk.

I personally would have preferred the "prestige" if you will, of doing a thesis and publishing. But again, my university grad school openly prefers research projects and my department literally told me "no" when I asked... the applied research project still involved about fifty pages of writing,but didn't contribute anything to the field and isn't something I could publish.

This same school btw, requires a one semester internship of all bachelor's students their senior year.

Is this mindset normal ?

Or is it becoming the "new normal" for grad schools?

 

Part of the problem, I think, of dissertation and thesis based Masters and Doctorates in law is, who would supervise it? To the extent I can draw any conclusions about a degree I've never attempted, the SJD usually requires either a dissertation or a series of three published articles. Law professors do publish (in un-peer-reviewed journals) so I suppose they might feel comfortable supervising that

 

This is the key. It is said in academia that it takes a doctor to make a doctor.

This issue is a big criticism of Sebastian Gorka's doctorate.