"Applied" Ed.D. Programs for California

A colleague pointed me today to the California State University System (CSU) website (www.calstate.edu) where I found a position paper arguing that the CSU system should be allowed to offer applied Doctor of Education programs to meet the high demand in the state. While the University of California System (UC) offers such programs, they are deemed cost prohibitive and research oriented, thus leaving private schools the task of providing doctoral programs with a practical emphasis.

I followed up with a call to the CSU chancellor's office. One staff person pointed out that while CSU made a strong case for being allowed to offer this single doctoral program, UC objected vehemently since that would detract students from their doctoral programs.

They settled the matter by agreeing to offer a joint Ed.D. that will be developed for working professionals and should cost no more than about $15,000 for the entire program over a three year period. For example, in the Bay Area, UC Berkeley, SF State, San Jose State and CSU Hayward have formed a consortium of sorts that will offer an Ed.D. in Urban Education Leadership.

This is an interesting departure from the tradition of keeping the two systems separate from each other. While the proposed program (slated to start in 2003) will not be offered in distance learning format, it takes working adults into consideration and should have classes only during the evenings and/or weekends.

If you're interested in the program, the contact person is one Emily Brizendine (CSU Hayward): 510-885-3942. Of course, you may not be able to reach her until the fall.

Here's a link to the document highlighting CSU's case:
CSU's Case for Offering Doctor of Education Degrees

 

thank you

Very interesting.
Thank you!

 

As a CSU faculty member (adjunct faculty, actually), I participated in discussions and surveys about this proposal. I, of course, was in favor of the proposal. UC (predictably) is concerned about protecting its turf.

In reality, California State University has been offering doctorates for years--in conjunction with UC and with private universities.

For example, Cal State Fresno has an education doctorate with UC Davis:

http://www.csufresno.edu/CSUF/academics/
(Click the link for "Joint doctoral program")

San Diego State offers over a dozen Ph.D. and Ed.D. programs in conjunction with Claremont Graduate University.

http://coursecat.sdsu.edu/bulletin/GD.pdf
(This file requires Adobe Acrobat Player to read)

Hopefully, all of the 23 CSU campuses will enter agreements to offer similar doctoral programs for students who do not live/work within the vicinity of one of the 9 UC campuses.

Tony Pina
Adjunct Faculty, Instructional Technology
CSU San Bernardino

 

Thank you for posting this information, Anthony. I did not know about the joint programs. Here's a question for you: Who actually awards the degree, CSU or UC? I think it would have been great if CSU had been authorized to offer their own doctorates. The professors are certainly qualified and the institutions seem to have the appropriate library resources and the like.

 

Massachusetts is having a similar problem. There is no such thing as "Massachusetts State University", we have the 4 branches of the University of Massachusetts (Amherst, Lowell, Boston, and Dartmouth) and several state colleges that are named for the cities where they reside.

The state colleges have offered Master's degrees and CAGS for years, but they just recently started to make noise about doctoral degrees. The MA Legislature has denied them the authorization to grant doctoral degrees, but one state college (I believe it's Bridgewater State College) offers the Ed.D. in conjunction with UMass-Dartmouth.


Bruce

 

I have not had time to review this document in full but I found this interesting statement from page 5 of the report:

"For those who work in school districts or county offices that are not close to universities offering a doctoral program in education, the choices are stark: stp working, find a new job in another district that is close, seek out a "diploma mill" that awards doctoral degrees by mail – or forego the degree."

The option of earning a distance RA EdD was not mentioned – Is this omission because of ignorance of RA DL programs, for political purposes, or for some other reason?

 

Ian, you raise a very important point. Fortunately, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and can benefit from the Berekley/CSU Hayward consortium. But many people are not in proximity to the universities. Now, I can say this. CSU Hayward offers a number of distance learning programs. The same is true of CSU Dominguez Hills and other CSU Campuses. Actually, the two I've mentioned offer graduate programs online. Unfortunately, these schools do not offer doctoral programs on their own. My sense is that the UC system may not be too enchanted about offering distance learning doctorates. After all, by and large, they are research oriented universities. They really should look at developing doctoral programs (especially the Ed.D.) by distance learning format through the partnerships.

 

Defii:

In the case of San Diego State, they award the doctorate (SDSU has been reclassified as a doctoral granting institution by Carnegie). I will talk to someone at Fresno State, but I'm pretty sure that UC Davis awards the degree.

Ian:

I do not think that the lack of mention of a DL Ed.D. was due to ignorance or anything political. It is simply that none of the institutions in question offer such a degree. I know a number of school administrators and other education professionals who have benefitted from their Nova Southeastern doctorates. A few Cal State campuses (most notably Dominguez Hills) offer MA degrees via distance learning, but not doctorates.

Tony Pina

 

Well, I'm someone at Fresno State! <grin> They are jointly awarded. There was talk the last couple of years about adding several other doctorates (such as one in applied linguistics), but it died.


Tom Nixon

 

Jointly awarded?

What does it say on your degree when you get it?

 

Re: Jointly awarded?

It gives the names of both universities. For most folks this is a good thing. The UC is a prestigious school system whereas as CSU is not.




Tom Nixon

 

CSU Long Beach offers an Applied Math PhD (part time, not DL) in cooperation with Claremont. If I recall correctly a student attends one year at Claremont. Both schools are on the diploma.

 

Re: Re: Jointly awarded?

Here's a question: Which rate of tuition does one pay for those joint degrees? Is it the higher U.C. rate or the lower C.S.U. rate?

 

In my last class at Cal State Hayward's MS Ed in Online Teaching and Learning, the Department Chair. Dr. Nan Chico answered questions for us in an asychronous discussion forum. This was in November 2002.

She basically said that an online EdD was in the works but will not appear for at least 5-6 years. I guess these things don't happen overnight. But according to her, it's at least in the works.

 

Bureaucracy!

It's interesting how the private non-profit and for profit institutions can plan and implement new programs in one year or so while it takes state institutions several years to roll out a program. One has to wonder if the "interest" of the students is even considered or is the perpetuating of the state bureaucracy paramount.

 

I think it depends on the state and the institution as to how fast things can be developed. There were no programs in Washingotn that granted degrees in rehabilitation counseling. However, Western Washington University was able to develop one fairly quickly. When is was discovered that a distance version of the degree was needed, it took WWU less than 2 years to create the on-line version. Why? there were guarenteed students and mulitple resources to help the program get going. The university of Arkansas at Little Rock has developed a Ph.D. that is DL and accomplished this in about 2 years. It is in rehabilitation. They will open for classes in August 2003.