Divisions among doctorates

For you not just a Chancellorate but a Chancellorate of Divinity. But wait...not just a Chancellorate of Divinity, act now and we will throw in an added bonus. Every time you press the University seal on your diploma it will play the Hallelujah chorus. But wait....act in the next 5 minutes and we will throw in a free diploma for ole Blue. Your dog can be the first on the block to have the prestigious Chancellorate of Glutumus Maximus Sniffology. This will entitle ole Blue to use the intials CGMS after his name. No longer will he be a broken down old hound dog but will have gained the respect of his peers and his vet.

North

 

North,

Once again you deliver an original! But actually it would be a Chancellorate of Theology.

As for Ole Blue, well, his dog house is already customized with the words "Ole Blue, DD." The DD stands for Doctor's Dog. However, he is a studious old mutt, so extra letters would look nice. Ole Blue is adamantly opposed to degree mills, so it would have to be a credible institution.

I also like the idea of a push button school seal, but, when pushed, could we have it play repeatedly, "This degree is accredited, this degree is accredited, this degree is accredited," just to add legitimacy to the credential?

Russell

 

I like the "accredited" mantra! That could be a little back up after the person got the degree and was beginning to have self doubt creep in. Kind of a pop psychology "Iam okay", "I am okay".

North

 

Exactly! And we all need a little assurance along the way. As for Ole Blue, he doesn't exist, but he would make a great dog.

Russell

 

Dear Bill,

Thank you very much for your response.

I think I misunderstood you a little bit, so I am sorry. Essentially, I agree with you. As I said before, if a person has a honest way of living, pays takes, and pays tuition, I don't have a problem with him or her being a lifetime student.

In regards to the possesion of titles, perhaps this encourages you a little bit. There is a little movement of some religious people in the Church of England who want to see the title "Reverend" eliminated. I am not sure if I agree with this or not, but you can see that there are some people that are not egocentric when it comes to titles.

My best regards,


Karlos Alberto Lacaye
[email protected]

 

Hello, there!

I don't know if there is a need to make fun of the Chancellorate. While this title doesn't exist in the United States, there are some Higher Doctorates overseas that are supposed to be at par with the Chancellorate. The Higher Doctorates are not honorific, they are earned. I have seen them in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand (I don't know about South Africa). Basically, you need to have a PhD, you need to have worked academically, and you also need to have made serious contributions to your field. In some instances, the Higher Doctorate is only conferred only after seven years of earning a PhD.

I am not saying if a Higher Doctorate is valuable or not; just that they are legitimate/earned and not honorific.

Best to all,


Karlos Alberto Lacaye
[email protected]

 

All in fun Karlos! After the circus on a.e.d. a little humor is refreshing.

Russell

 

Hey, Russell!

Yes, I agree. The only thing I hope is that no one holding a Higher Doctorate is reading the thread. Incidentally, I will see right now how AED is doing.

Regards,


Karlos Al Lacaye
[email protected]

 

This is a high priority, but I don't know if MIGS has been able to move this forward for the CEU. As I understand it, the CEU would have to obtain an institutional code, and that would involve the USDOE in their (CEU's) operations, at least during the approval process. Dr. Arias told me they were working on it, but I know it isn't in the immediate future.

Frankly, I feel their approval for financial aid and VA is critical to their growth. But what do I know?

Rich Douglas

 

TO PUT IT SIMPLY NORTH, THE J.D. IN THE US IS THE SAME AS THE BACHELORS DEGREE OF LAW (LLB) IN THE UK ( AND OTHER PLACES). THE AMERICANS THOUGHT IT IMPROPER TO DO 'POST' GRADUATE STUDIES IN LAW AND ONLY EARN A BACHELORS, SO THEY CHANGED IT TO THE JURIS DOCTORATE

 

I totally agree with you. Even before the advent of J.D. degree, American lawyers were reluctant to pursue LLM and LLD/Ph.D. Yale and Harvard law schools faculty pages show that the highest qualification attained by most of the older faculty members is LLB. These professors earned their law degrees in '50s and '40s.

Ike Okonkwo

 

Welcome to the Forum!

I realized that this was the case with the J.D. credential in the USA. In fact when I mentioned to a US relative of mine that in Canada the degree was an LLB she was appalled.

North

 

ON THAT TOPIC AS WELL, THE ONE THING THAT I FIND SOMEWHAT AMUSING IS THAT ALOT OF PEOPLE WILL SHUN THE FACT THAT IT'S COMPARABLE TO AN LLB AND FOCUS ON THE 'DOCTORATE' SIDE OF THINGS. JUST TO ENHANCE THE FACT THAT THEY ARE COMPARABLE, IF YOU LOOK AT QUALIFIED LAWYERS IN THE US THAT HAVE COMPLETED A J.D. ANY OF THEM THAT GO ONTO DO OTHER GRADUATE WORK, THE NATURAL ROUTE FOR FURTHER STUDIES IN LAW IN TO DO THE LLM (MASTERS DEGREE IN LAW). IT WOULD NORMALLY BE STRANGE TO 'ADVANCE' FROM A DOCTORATE TO A MASTERS, BUT THIS IS THE CASE WITH MANY PEOPLE THAT PURSUE LAW AND DO FURTHER STUDIES AFTER COMPLETING A J.D.

THAT IS THE EASIST WAY I HAVE FOUND TO COMPARE THE US LAW DOCTORATE WITH OTHER STUDIES IN LAW WORLDWIDE.

CHEERS

DAN

 

Does anyone have a list (or an online source) of reputable RA DL schools that offer JD programs? That concept sounds very interesting for me.

Thanks in advance,

Greets from Germany,

Trigger

 

This is a common theme on this and other discussion boards.

The only sources for DL JD degrees in the U.S. are unaccredited California schools. While you can conceivably study anywhere in the world, you must pass the state's (California's) First Year Law Students Qualifying Examination ("Baby Bar")after one year of study. (Only required of students at unaccredited law schools, as all distance law schools are.) After that hurdle, you're faced with three more years of study until you qualify to take the Bar Exam, where your chances of passing are dismal (compared to state-approved and ABA-accredited schools, all of which are classroom-based). If you are one of the few salmon to make it upstream, you will find yourself--at least initially--restricted to practicing law in California and (I think) the Federal courts.

Low numbers of candidates pass the Baby Bar, then low numbers pass the Bar. These two dismal results compound to result in maybe one in 10 (probably less; some students dont' even get to the Baby Bar stage, dropping out in or after the first year.) distance students ever being licensed to practice law in California.

The pass rates for unaccredited (distance and residential) law schools do vary substantially, but the curve is skewed to the low side.

The Washington Post Company, through one of its subsidiary companies, operates the Concord University School of Law. While this effort has the backing of the largest test preparation company in the country (Kaplan), their students haven't fared all that well on the Baby Bar. The school hasn't been around long enough to qualify any of its students for the Bar, so we'll have to wait and see. Still, Concord made a big splash, due largely to its substantial resources, Internet presence and delivery system, and the involvement of high profile figures in legal education.

I encourage you to read the 14th edition of Bears' Guide to find out more regarding particular schools and pass rates. It would be hard from Germany, involving at least 2 trips to California (probably more), plus one big move in order to practice there.

Speaking of practicing, you should check with graduates of any DL JD program to see what opportunities they had upon graduation and passing the Bar. Simply having a license to practice is no guarantee of employment, especially when one is from an unaccredited school--and hasn't had the opportunity to network into a paying job after graduation.

Rich Douglas

 

hello there trigger. rich is quite right about the distance learning JD scene. The majority (if not all in the US) of schools doing the JD through DL are in California and are unfortunately unaccredited, and as Rich pointed out, there are other ways but they involved more study and can someitmes be harder. For someone like yourself from Germany, it could be a different situation. A couple of questions for you, and from these answers, you could ascertain what would be best for you:

1. Do you hold an accredited honours degree (Bachelors)?
2. Are you specifically interested in the JD?
3. Are you going to practice Law / would you like to, or are you looking at it from a qualification viewpoint (doing a Doctorate...)?

From research, something to consider, particularly being in Europe like myself, is the University of London External Program (see www.lon.ac.uk/external). You can study for a distance learning LLB at centres throughout Europe and indeed the world. From there you could complete an LLM (Masters in Law) in either a general or a specific field - EU Law, Commercial, Litigation and so on.

And from what has previously been mentioned on this topic, this could be a real posibility for you to study what would be deemed, at a 'higher' level than the JD (by doing the LLM). If you are a graduate of a good honours degree, it is possible to go straight onto and complete a Masters in Law in under 18 months (if you push it).

Depending on what you want to do, you could then pursue Law by doing Legal Practice from this, or your 'articles' in Law, depending on where you are. To go directly into Law for yourself, consider the LPC (Legal Practice Certificate), which is offered by the U of London, a one year program for graduates, which would then allow you to enter a Law firm and begin your training, which would take a maximum of two years, resulting in becoming a 'fully fledged' lawyer (another one in the world I hear many say!).

Let me know your feeback Trigger,

Cheers

Dan

 

Hello welshboy, and Rich.
Thanks a lot for your replies.

To your questions, welshboy:

1. Do you hold an accredited honours degree (Bachelors)?

Yes.
A German state university Master´s degree in Management/Economics.

2. Are you specifically interested in the JD?

Also Yes.
The J.D. degree could be a wonderful 2nd qualification towards my business career.

3. Are you going to practice Law / would you like to, or are you looking at it from a qualification viewpoint (doing a Doctorate...)?

I do not intend to practice law at any time - just the knowledge of the subject itself would be very interesting for me - and the possibility of "using" the degree in my mother country - therefore some kind of "real" accredition would be necessary (like RA in the USA, or AACSB for example for business schools, or the GAAP of worldwide universities).

Another bachelor´s degree would not be interesting for me, nor another Master´s (LLM), but the "Juris Doctor" could be a very interesting reputable degree especially for use in Europe.

Anyhow - thanks for all your comments - this board is definetely the best and friendliest one of its kind I´ve ever seen (especially compared to the now spam-overrided newsgroups).

Greets,

Trigger

 

As some on this board has rightly pointed out, the J.D. is a first professional degree in law--in the same way that the M.D. is the first professional degree in medicine.

When the American Bar Association allowed for the transformation of the LL.B. to the J.D. in the 1960's--this was done because unlike European LL.B.'s which was the first university degree attained, most American law students' LL.B.'s were in fact second degrees.

Do not take this to be surpising. In the 1800's, America began offering physicians the degree of M.D. without any previous Bachelors--and some medical schools today in the U.S. still do not require a B.A./B.S. in order to earn an M.D. (Univ. of Missouri, Loma Linda University, etc.). In many parts of Europe and the world, the basic medical degree is still the M.B./B.S. (or Ch.B.) Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery (with higher being other masters and research doctorates). A physician's use of the title "Doctor" is honorific--it is cultural. In England, whether one is a physician or surgeon, one needs to complete medical school (M.B./B.S.), but if one goes on to residency to become a surgeon, one uses the title "Mr" instead of "Dr." It is cultural. Regardless if people refer to you as Mr. or Dr.--you are what you are.

The culture of the American legal system is often to use "Mr." instead of "Dr." to prevent confusion in the courts. This is not to say that an American lawyer with a J.D. cannot use the title "Dr." The ABA has equated the J.D. as equivalent to the Ph.D. in terms of being a doctorate--though we must keep in mind that the purposes for those two degrees are different--the first, like the M.D., focuses on applied learning, while the latter, on original research.

For all practical purposes, the J.D. and M.D.'s are terminal degrees in their respective fields in the U.S.--though one can technically go for specialist degrees (only offered in certain specialties) within both programs (i.e., LL.M. in Taxation or M.S. and/or Ph.D. in Biomedical Genetics respectively).

The Ph.D. is the highest academic degree in the U.S. (in general) but in many European countries, there are higher doctorates (i.e., Doctor of Litterature, Doctor of Laws, Doctor of Divinity). Many of the higher doctorates in England are honorary doctorates in this country--but in most of Europe, they are indeed earned degrees--the Doctor of Divinity (in England), being the most senior.

Someone on the board stated that they think the S.J.D. (Doctor of Juridical Science) is a professional degree. I want to clarify that the S.J.D. is a research degree equivalent to any other research doctoral degree. There is no professional training in the S.J.D.--it is mainly focussed on research that will yield a dissertation. Where the S.J.D. differs from most Ph.D.'s is that it is often (due to limitations on popularity and staffing) focussed on limited areas of the law (i.e., International Law) for research whereas a Ph.D. can be in almost any area (as long as there are doctoral mentors in those areas). Most U.S. attorneys do not need anything higher than the J.D. to teach in the law schools or even at other doctoral levels. Like the M.D., you would want teaching practitioners, after receiving their professional doctorates, to really be good practitioners--and that comes with experience. This is the reason why professors of law and medicine do not really focus on theoretical academic research as they do on the developments of their skills and practices (and as they do that, they in fact do clinical research). Most of us would not care if a Cardiovascular surgeon did a dissertation on the heart as much as he/she is a leading surgeon and have operated on those hearts (as opposed just researching). The same applies to many professors of law--you would hope that they were or are leading practitioners in their fields of practice.

Personally, I would prefer people to be called what they actually do--as in most asian cultures. If you are a physician, use that term, surgeon, use that, professor, etc. Unfortunately, American culture is heavily influenced by British academic systems without the established aristocratic heirarchy--thus, we will continue to compensate for the use of academic titles in a land without aristocratic titles.

EsqPhD

 

If so, they are mistaken. When law schools changed from giving out a second bachelor's to issuing this so-called "doctor's" degree, nothing had changed in the curriculum. The J.D. is equivalent to a really long, course-based master's. Because the J.D. lacks a thesis requirement, some would even argue it is less than a master's, that the L.L.B. is the most accurate designation for this program.

I recognize the nature of the professional doctorate; I'm just disappointed that the professions involved chose to take that form of designation for their entry-level credential. The O.D., D.O., J.D., D.P.M., D.D.S., M.D. and the like are not really doctorates. The rest of the world recognizes this; it is in the U.S. where we create such confusion.

We've often seen holders of academic doctorates ridiculed for using the title "doctor," saying these people are "wannabes" for doing so. It is really the other way around. It is unfortunate that the health care industry appropriated the title "doctor" for its own.

And if you don't think it's a dirty little practice they're participating in, ponder this: how many chiropractics, podiatrists, optometrists, etc. trade on the public's confusion/ignorance that lumps them in with medical doctors? Medical doctors will normally use "Jane Jones, M.D." as their title on doors, signs, and the like. But the rest of the para-doctors will almost always be listed as "Dr. Jane Jones." Gee, I wonder why?

No, a "doctor" is someone who has completed the academic requirements necessary to earn that title. The rest are just posers.

Rich Douglas

 

While I agree that the medical and pseudo medical professions have misleadingly appropriated the title "Dr." from academics, we are nevertheless faced with the onslaught of professional doctorates these days--that I don't think will go away.

A response to your critique about American law degrees (the Juris Doctor), while I agree that it is not a research based doctorate, I would not say that it is equivalent to Masters level or lower--that is, actually a bit unfounded. The accredited law program in any country, under any title--be it LL.B., J.D., Licentiate, or in Germany, Dr.Iur, is a very rigorous degree program which I would equate at the doctoral level or higher. At least, this has been my experience. I hold the Ph.D. in Historical Theology and Comparative Religion from an Ivy League university (any e-mail holder can claim this I suppose, but I guess you will have to trust me on this) and a J.D. from a small law school (albeit acredited) and have found the rigours in my law program to be more intense than my Ph.D. This is not to say that the Ph.D. was a walk in the park--far from that--but I think that they have different rigours--but in my experience, both law degree and the dreaded Bar (California), I would replace by doing another dissertation any day.

Academics in history changes form--and what we believe to be the standard now, may not have been 1000 years ago, or even 100 years from now. Academic credentials will also vary from culture to culture through different times. While I hate the fact that the academic title of "doctor" has been misappropriated by some professions, with no more than a Bachelor's (i.e., Bachelor of Medicine), I have to realize that there may be other cultural equivalencies to the research doctorate level (I want to emphasize "level" and not equate it with the same exact equivalence) even though those other non-research based degrees yield the title of doctor.

Aside from your unlearned lay people, I think the learned ones will be able to differentiate the various types and forms of degrees.

I really don't think doctorates in any form or shape are in themselves impressive to the learned and upper eschelon of society. I think that society, in general, be it past or present, looks more to the purpose and social status that the individual degree brings. One can call a medical or law degree bachelor, doctor, or even a certificate--but for all practical purposes, if a particular culture (obviously America does whereas say Russia doesn't) deems it of more value than say the Ph.D. in teaching and the like, you can't really fight that. And yes, America does deem most medical and law degrees of more economic and social value than the Ph.D. in teaching--whereas, in Russia, it is the other way around. Who is right? Both sides have their arguments.

I think that while one may disagree or perhaps even get irritated at these matters, one has to move on--for like it or not, the research based doctorate will have to exist among non-research based professional doctorates. While it grits my teeth every time a quack for Chiropractor refers to himself as a "doctor" rather than Chiropractor and allowing others to call him "doctor" if they choose, once those things are let out of the bag, I don't think one can put it back in.

People can call any person "doctor" but if the degree is not truly worthy (i.e., unacredited, mail ordered, or quackery pseudo medicine want to be), the follow up comments will usually be an "Oh"--and we can imagine what the facial expression truly indicates of the person who says "Oh" is really thinking (i.e., "you bunch of ignoramous and title envying quacks" then walks away).

EsqPhD