Can Doctorate be Unaccredited?

Discussion in 'Accreditation Discussions (RA, DETC, state approva' started by Bill Huffman, Jul 11, 2003.

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  1. Mike Albrecht

    Mike Albrecht New Member

    Yours is probably a very good example. Now if you had done the work through Univeristy of Cape Town - Avian Demogrpahy Unit just think how much more valuable it would have been.
     
  2. Guest

    Guest Guest

    Not only is a Bob Jones doctorate credible in certain disciplines (religious education, fundamentalist theological circles, etc...), other unaccredited religious oriented schools also offer substantive doctoral programs. I would concur that many unaccredited religious schools are little more than mills, but certainly not all.

    Regarding the availability of the dissertation, i.e., in terms of making a contribution to the body of literature in a particular discipline, many unaccredited religious schools are by design geared toward a specific group. For example, some schools were created to train the ministers of a particular fellowship, denomination, etc. Several independent Baptist schools come to mind, e.g., BJU, Pensacola Christian College, Luther Rice (pre-TRACS), Louisiana Baptist, etc... While these school are not RA (although LRU now has TRACS), doctorates from these schools are widely accepted among the independent Baptists as being credible. Dissertations from such schools, while perhaps not having the same exposure/availability as RA dissertations, do contribute to the body of literature among this particular group.

    So, if a dissertation makes a significant contribution to a particular group's body of literature, does this not warrant legitimacy? Indeed, the dissertation may not enjoy the "world-wide" exposure of some, however, it is expanding the knowledge of a particular group.
     
  3. fnhayes

    fnhayes New Member

    My manual on the NATURAL HISTORY, CAPTIVE MANAGEMENT & SURVIVAL OF THE NZ BROWN TEAL (the brown teal being the world's second most endangered duck), published in NZ by the Brown Teal Conservation Trust, has been already discussed at length on DegreeInfo.
    If anyone would like a copy shoot me a note to - [email protected]
    The manual is 50,000 words with sixty illustrations, and takes around 1/2 to download in three segments.
    I believe St Clements University makes available its major PhD dissertations. But is St Clements 'a mill' or a good unaccredited
    university?
    'Duck Boy' in 'paradise'. :)
     
  4. Dennis Ruhl

    Dennis Ruhl member

    Reality Check

    What percentage of the dissertations from R/A PhD factories that graduate doctors in the hundreds, each year, have any significance to the body of knowledge?

    Is the 20,000th dissertation in a minor area of psychology any more groundbreaking than the 19,999th?

    Is the dissertation, today, just showing that yes, I can do independent research and write a really long, coherent, multi-term paper?

    In many universities, is there still even the pretence of adding to the body of knowledge?
     
  5. Re: Reality Check

    Yes :D

     
  6. tcnixon

    tcnixon Active Member

    Re: Re: Can Doctorate be Unaccredited?


    Certainly true. My guess (and I readily admit that it is a guess) is that of these unaccredited religious schools, most are brick & mortar. Distance learning unaccredited religious schools can be another matter. Some are certainly legitimate, but as I reminded my nine-year-old son today, "some" can be a vague concept (as in, "Have you done your homework." "I've done some of it."). How many exactly are legitimate is almost impossible to tell. This is why some type of accreditation is helpful for students.

    I have two close friends who went to Christ for the Nations College (go figure; most would think we would have little in common) in Dallas, Texas. Certainly unaccredited, but it served the purpose for them and they got a good education (based on what I perceive as the outcome).



    Tom Nixon
     
  7. Dennis Ruhl

    Dennis Ruhl member

    Re: Re: Reality Check

    Just the pretence?
     
  8. cehi

    cehi New Member

    J - Maybe a great dissertation could come out of an unaccredited school but the probability is quite low. Has it ever happened?

    Cehi: Since nobody knows if this has ever happened, I can only suggest that we search the available database to find out.

    J - There is no need to decide that they're all of poor quality but I think it's really quite safe to say that they're not all of good quality.

    Cehi: If this statement only support your opinion, I respect and yield to it. I would agree further if it had been investigated.

    J - I, for one, would prefer it if they were assessed prior to landing on the Web.

    Cehi: I agree. But, if we do not know whether they do or not, we have to investigate or read the dissertations to find out.

    J - I haven't the time or the inclination to assess dissertations, especially when they're beyond the point where they can be modified.

    Cehi: If this is the case, any opinion cannot be accepted at face value without proper investigation(s) or assessment(s). The purpose of a research...is to investigate, assess, etc., in order to conclude. The modifications a dissertation may need extends to both supervised or unsupervised (if this the case) dissertations.

    Overall, I appreciate and respect your views. Also, I agree that Bill Dayson did a very good job in providing information about the school that he had explained. Thank you.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 13, 2003
  9. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    Re: Reality Check

    I'd say yes. The way it works is that the more we learn, the more we learn that there is more to learn. :)

    Now many disciplines require teams of candidates doing research together. For example, in the Computer Sciences what frequently happens, on projects that might have a dozen or so working on it, is that after a few years on the project the person writes up their own contribution in the dissertation and the degree is granted.
     
  10. Re: Re: Re: Reality Check

    I believe your phrase was "even the pretence" :D

     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 14, 2003
  11. cehi

    cehi New Member

    Bill Huffman: "I'd say yes. The way it works is that the more we learn, the more we learn that there is more to learn."


    Cehi: I whole-heartedly agree, in as much as the sources of learning are not limited that may encourage a narrow conclusion.
     
  12. Jack Tracey

    Jack Tracey New Member

    Re: Re: Reality Check

    I would also agree. In my experience, the more I learn, the more I see connections to fields of study that were previously seen as being unrelated. This is one reason why I like interdisciplinary degree programs so much.
    Jack
     
  13. henrikfyrst

    henrikfyrst New Member

    Dennis Ruhl wrote:

    QUOTE
    "Reality Check

    What percentage of the dissertations from R/A PhD factories that graduate doctors in the hundreds, each year, have any significance to the body of knowledge?

    Is the 20,000th dissertation in a minor area of psychology any more groundbreaking than the 19,999th?

    Is the dissertation, today, just showing that yes, I can do independent research and write a really long, coherent, multi-term paper?

    In many universities, is there still even the pretence of adding to the body of knowledge?"
    UNQUOTE

    Dennis,

    E M Phillips and D S Pugh, in their book ‘How to get a PhD’ (2nd edition), offer the following definitions of the term ‘originality’:

    - Setting down a major piece of new information in writing for the first time
    - Continuing a previously original piece of work
    - Carrying out original work designed by the supervisor
    - Providing a single original technique, observation, or result in an otherwise unoriginal but competent piece of research
    - Having many original ideas, methods and interpretations all performed by others under the direction of the candidate
    - Showing originality in testing somebody else’s idea
    - Carrying out empirical work that hasn’t been done before
    - Making a synthesis that hasn’t been made before
    - Using already known material but with a new interpretation
    - Trying out something in this country that has previously only been done in other countries
    - Taking a particular technique and applying it in a new area
    - Bring new evidence to bear on an old issue
    - Being cross-disciplinary and using different methodologies
    - Looking at areas that people in the discipline haven’t looked at before
    - Adding to knowledge in a way that hasn’t previously been done before

    So, the candidate has 15 different ways to satisfy the need for 'adding to existing knowledge'. The term 'incremental' is very important to understand. If you look through the history of the world and find examples of 'great men and women' with advanced degrees, their theses/dissertations will have been on something pretty mundane. Great discoveries and philosophical insight are rarely, if ever, found in this context.

    As for credibility, there is a factor called 'the supervisor', and yet another called 'the assessor(s)'. Where at some institutions there can be some pressure levied on the involved parties that a candidate pass the eye of the needle, things are somewhat different here. The instruction is that only work that is 'convincing' must receive a pass. These people have a reputation to maintain, and are certainly not inclined to producing left-hand work when it comes to an unaccredited institution. In reality, the candidate is not encouraged to make formal submission before draft submission(s) are considered solid. Faculty work for us on a basis that relieves them of any pressure they might otherwise experience. This means the on-going supervision and following assessment remains frank and direct, and does not take into consideration anything but the formal instructions and the document itself.

    As for quality, I am frequently told that the level of work presented by our candidates is well into the realm of 'good to great', and that it compares favourably with work submitted to recognised institutions.

    Your point that there are now so many thousands of documents created each year that it becomes virtually impossible to use this as a data source is succinct.

    There is a point to the issue of availability, of course, but it has been my experience that our graduates have done their own legwork in making available their documents and findings to relevant bodies. In the majority of cases topic areas are so narrow that the potential readership is quite limited, and the author knows who they are.

    I find the discussion about 'accepting documents from un-accredited institutions' a bit odd. It should be the document that counts, not the depositing body. Just think about it: If the depository in question were to accept documents from all-comers, would that not give the detractors of un-accredited providers a welcome opportunity to see for themselves if what they suspect is in fact the case? Would you then not be able to make John's experiment come true, simply pick 5 documents at random from a randomly picked accredited school, and 5 at random from a randomly picked unaccredited school?


    Henrik
     
  14. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    Yes, the document is important. So is an effective review and judgment of it. Other researchers rely on the veracity of these documents (dissertations, journal articles, etc.); they make up the literature in the field upon which future work will be based. That trust exists because disserations are reviewed by committees and journal articles are peer reviewed. Without this, there is no assurance that the author has employed legitimate research methods and has drawn reasonable conclusions from them. Without institutional review, there is too much of a leap of faith.

    These things are true in other forms of publishing. In the media, what is published is usually considered true because it has been reviewed by managing editors. (Hence the blow up over Jayson Blair's fakery on articles very few people have actually read). Book publishers perform the same function. This is why one should not accept all one reads on the internet at face value: no such review exists and we're all self-publishers. The same with many of the unaccredited schools we discuss here.
     
  15. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    The evidence presented in this thread seems to suggest to me that some very specialized unaccredited institutions legitimately contribute to their specialized area of expertise. Therefore I'd assume that the doctors from these institutions have satisfied that aspect of the doctorate. Unfortunately, none of the examples given included distance learning institutions but I don't see why they can't mean that they do or could exist in the future.

    I think we've also seen many examples where great work has been done at some less than great unaccredited institutions. This great work has then been pushed by the author and received some recognition and utility as part of the general knowledge store, meeting at least this portion of a bona fide doctorate.

    What I haven't seen is anything to convince me that unaccredited doctorates coming out of a general education unaccredited institution can really ever be counted on to statisfy this aspect of a doctorate. I think that Dr. Douglas has made an excellent argument as to why this is apparently the case. This type of institution is not really part of the mainstream academic community. It's processes are unproven and in general can't be trusted. While great work may occasional go on their, it has very little chance of being accepted or used in the greater academic community.
     
  16. Kirkland

    Kirkland Member

    1. Can doctorate be unaccredited? Yes. There are many instances where a State Approved doctorate, certified by the State as a quality education, have been acceptable and used successfully.

    2. This thread seems to focus on the dissertation as the sole contribution one makes to legitimize a doctorate. I submit that there are many professional doctorates who are practicing their craft day in and day out, who are not authors but are nevertheless contributing to the body of knowledge in their respective areas of expertise being engaged in line functions rather than academic.
     
  17. obecve

    obecve New Member

    First professional doctorates are very different than academic doctorates...and...yes only the dissertation or similar final project that contributes new knowledge to the field is accepted as the standard.
     
  18. Phineas Phreakers

    Phineas Phreakers New Member

    Unaccredited Universities re: Doctoral Dissertations

    Interesting discussions. Let me offer this for all to "smoke over"...most doctoral programs at traditional universities express a wide variety of requirements -- it simply depends not only on the university, but more commonly, the department in question, and, the specific program and subject matter studied.

    As an example, a fully accredited university which I know of has a department of earth, marine and atmospheric sciences. PhD requirements generally account for only a detailed dissertation and oral exam (no additional coursework beyond the masters level). Seem simple? not necessarily. The concept of the PhD (in sciences) is to identify and pursue an independant body of work and present the results. BY the time most candidates receive a MS they have had all applicable course work required, thus, a PhD with no additional course work is a standard item at many institutions.

    In my opinion, the "value" of a university being accredited or not is a minor consideration -- especially for the PhD level -- what matters more is the quality of what your doing and the end product. As far as the discussion on non-accredited institutions not having the same "exposure" of their dissertations as an accredited instiitution -- I believe this to be poppycock. Anyone worth their salt should be able to take their dissertation and "regurgitate" some of it sufficiently through the vast array of professional society publications in order to get the "exposure" desired.

    For my MS (which was obtained with a thesis and orals from a large public accredited institution...) I copyrighted my thesis in order to get royalties (and to prevent my committee prof from taking my work and publishing it in his name...). In the 20 years since, I have not received one red cent from this!! So the value of "exposure" of the thesis or dissertation is in the eye of the beholder. As mentioned, publish in professional societies if that turns you on.

    For me, a valid effort put forth in a PhD dissertation from an unaccredited school such as K-W or others is just as valid as most, and more valid than many. Depends on your product and what you actually learned.
     
  19. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    Re: Unaccredited Universities re: Doctoral Dissertations

     
  20. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    A year or so ago I became interested in a particular feature of public international law. The development was so new that there wasn't any case law; indeed, public international law frequently generates no case law in the usual sense. I did a LEXIS search of journal articles and found two or three, one at least of which was an edited JSD dissertation from a Canadian school.

    As a practical matter, I just don't see how I could have identified this source if the writer had taken his JSD from an unaccredited school, no matter how well he'd done his work. Such schools just aren't connected with the rest of the academic community.
     

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