sanantone brought up an interesting point (tangential) that I have wondered about. For lack of better terminology I will call it building on versus stacking. In some settings in the UK, US, and elsewhere you build up on education on the way to your PhD. For example, literature undergraduate, literature Masters, and literature PhD. Along the way, you fine tune and focus knowledge on the way to a speciality. You become an expert in a field. In other PhD programs (eg at for-profits) you have a bachelor's in something, enter with a Masters in something and earn a PhD. You take taught classes at the doctoral level that familiarize you with the field and then do your research and dissertation. Can the latter method make you the same level of expert in the field as the former. One is piling knowledge higher and deeper and the other is stacking hierarchical degrees (nomenclature) on top of one another.
In interdisciplinary fields, it is very common for academics to have degrees in different fields. Sometimes, all of their degrees are in a different field from what they're studying and/or teaching. For example, many criminal justice and criminology professors have degrees in sociology. Forensic science professors rarely have all two or three degrees in forensic science. It's actually more common for them to have no degree in forensic science. In the safety field, it is also very common for professors to not have a doctorate in safety. In security studies, you'll very rarely see someone with a doctorate in security studies, but you will see a lot of degrees in public policy, political science, international relations, ethnic and cultural studies, and history. In regard to education, my state has a heavy preference for subject matter degrees instead of education degrees. We don't have many undergraduate degrees in education at our in-state institutions. My K-12 teachers had bachelor's degrees in history, math, chemistry, biology, etc. In that case, if they decided to earn a master's or doctorate in education, many of them would not be starting with a bachelor's degree in education.
I will echo Sanantone. I will preface my comments by saying my experience is mostly with state schools. It is extremely uncommon for any of the universities in my region to offer more than one or two doctorate degrees. The state university where I got my BS only offers two doctorates. One is an EdD in k-12 administration. The other -oddly- is a PhD in biology. Neither is nationally ranked and both are in-person only with no online work. The public university down the road from me only offers two, a hybrid EdD in elementary education and a hybrid, cohort-based DPA in government. The two local private universities (both non-profit) top out at the masters level, with no doctorate programs at all... Though both are barely surviving. One is trying to start a DNP program because it believes it will be a cash cow. The university where I got my master's is one of the two major universities in the state. As such it does have a law school and a small med school. It also offers a DBA in economics, an EdD with several specialties, and PhDs in history, english, and most of the hard sciences. However, NONE are offered online, with the exception of an EdD specialization that offers a hybrid format for working teachers. So pickings are kind of slim, depending on your background and career. In my entire State there are no doctoral level programs at any school, in my career field... (Firefighting or EMS). EMS programs top out at the Associate level in my state and fire programs at the bachelor's level... unless someone pursues a masters in law enforcement provided they have a certification in arson investigations. Given this, I am trying to find something online through out-of-state state schools in a field that I might at least be familiar with... Emergency Management, Homeland Security, or a Public Policy program with a relevant specialty. I guess my point is this... for folks like me looking for online doctoral programs, let alone asynchronous doctoral programs... pickings can be rare to damn near non existent. Thus I will likely be taking a degree from whomever I can afford, in something that is vaguely familiar to me. I am sure others have been down the same road. This seems to be what drives many US students to pursue multiple schools and multiple majors.
I think this is caused by two things: 1. New majors 2. Credential creep Homeland security is a relatively new major and so is cybersecurity. We're now seeing the creation of cyberpsychology programs. For a while, we're going see mostly professors and researchers without doctorates directly in these fields. For a long time, criminology and criminal justice programs had to rely on sociology, psychology, economics, and law majors because CJ/criminology doctorates were rare. In your field, there appears to be credential creep aka degree inflation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but fire science and EMS have traditionally been vocational programs taught at community colleges. Two-year schools can hire professors with associate's and bachelor's degrees for vocational programs. For academic programs intended for transfer, they can hire people with master's degrees. When graduate schools create master's degrees in a vocational field, then they start to need doctorates to teach in the master's programs. I witnessed this with athletic training. As with the programs mentioned above, they hire anyone who has experience and/or a bachelor's or master's in the subject plus a doctorate in a somewhat related field i.e. public administration. Or, they'll hire someone with a generic EdD. You see this a lot in Embry-riddle's aviation programs since aviation doctorates are few and far between. One of the professors in the forensic science program I completed specializes in fire investigations and explosives, but he has an EdD. With that said, I did find it strange that Capitol Technology University admitted an attorney to a dissertation-only PhD in computer science program and let him complete a dissertation on law. Computer science is something that needs to be built upon, in my opinion, but it doesn't need to be all computer science degrees. One can build up from mathematics, physics, or electrical engineering. When I entered my forensic program, I already had a background in criminal law, psychology, terrorism, biology, and forensic medicine - all offered as core or elective courses in the forensic science program. So, even if the degree titles aren't the same, it doesn't necessarily indicate that the person wasn't building upon previous education.
@sanantone You are right about credential creep. And I think the United States has led the way in that with everything from the JD, MDiv, DPT, DPharm, and so on. I talked to an occupational therapist the other day who said their profession is also slowly transitioning to the doctor of occupational therapy. And I think when some of these people interact overseas people in their same profession think wait a minute why is this person a doctor of something when I just have a bachelor's degree. I thought law would resist this trend but in Australia and Canada it is happening. Not in the UK yet I don't think but then perhaps they're a little more confident in there esteemed traditions.
