Doctor of Professional Practice (can possibly transfer free graduate certificate)

Here are the requirements:

• A few thousand words on who you are, what you want to do, what the need is, etc. This is in the admissions process.
• The first year has two elements:
  • What amounts to a proposal and literature review to establish your work's place in the discipline and what you intend to do to earn the degree (about 15K words). They call it a "learning agreement."
  • A personal essay reflecting on your life and work, with an emphasis on your readiness to take on the research (about 5K words
• During the next two or more years you conduct projects and write them up. The product is dissertation-like and is around 50K words.

After writing it, you have to present it to a panel (seems like a viva voce), do a "reflective activity," and present it publicly. It's not clear exactly what those last two look like.

Te Pūkenga – New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology awards the degree. They are THE polytechnic in New Zealand, the result of combining 16 polys into one nationwide system. The doctorate--the only one they offer, it seems, was housed in Otago Polytechnic, but now Te Pūkenga is the awarding institution.

The title is awkward--Doctor of Professional Practice--and the post-nominal (DProfPrac) is positively unwieldy. But the process seems solid, the school is both huge and very real, and it is well-suited to host a professional doctoral program. I just wish they'd use a better title, like the Doctor of Technology (DTECH).

Finally, I sent them a list of questions about the program and they answered me the same day with thoroughness and clarity.

 

Hm. When I was just "knee high to a married grasshopper" we used to call the (Ford) Thunderbird a "Rumblechicken". Might work for a school name?

 

Also the brand name of a very cheap fortified wine.

Such memories!

 

Yep. "Night Train" was another high-octane brand. Kept the cold out when you rode in a boxcar. I always liked the (unrelated) song of that name, too! It was a favourite with a couple of exotic dancers I met...

 

Ironically, it didn't, while it did feel that way. When it comes to the cold, the anesthetic effects of alcohol make you feel the cold less, but the dehydrating effects actually make you colder. Paradoxically, you are colder while you feel warmer.

When I taught leadership in a more, um, "demanding" environment, I ran a survival simulation (on paper). One of those exercises where you have to rank a set of items (maps, water, etc.) by their importance to your survival. One of the scenarios I used was surviving on the moon while awaiting rescue. In it, two liters of alcohol was one of the items. Now, the alcohol was ranked like 14th of 16 items, but teams would consistently rate it much higher, usually citing the reason above. (Burning it was another, even though that was impossible under those conditions.) But it was the one item that drew the most outlandish rationalizations for why they ranked it higher (often much higher) than it should have been. (The other really over-rated was the pistol. Gee, I wonder why?)

 

All true. Significant amounts of liquor, taken (at least partly) in the hope that it would work as human anti-freeze, have contributed to many exposure deaths. Thanks for adding a dose of needed reality to my fictional nonsense, Rich.

 

Well, if you REALLY didn't like listening to your survival coach.... or anyone tried to make off with your 2 liters of alcohol...

 

Merchant Marine survival training ran a similar exercise. There the most important thing, short of a life preserver, was the ability to signal for help.

 

The rate of alcohol related death in McKinley County NM is three times the state as a whole and ten times the national rate. Getting drunk in the bitter cold of the Colorado Plateau winter means literally freezing solid.

I hate alcohol.

 

Ever hear of the "Starlight Tours," nosborne? It's a Canadian thing I'm not the least proud of. It was the practice in Saskatchewan, of police arresting intoxicated Natives and instead of taking them to the drunk tank, driving them miles out of town and leaving them in bitter cold. At least 75 people froze to death that way.

Here's an article: https://allthatsinteresting.com/starlight-tours

I hate these police.

 

The admissions advisor was...I'm going to be nice. After speaking with his manager, he learned that there is no cap for this first cohort. They'll just be making a determination on whether you're a good fit for the program. At first, he said that admission was competitive, so I asked how are applicants going to be compared with each other. Well, they're not going to be compared to each other because there's no limit on who can be admitted. He told me that, if you have the experience and relevant education, you're pretty much guaranteed acceptance at this point. This could change in the future. Don't know. Just try to apply before whatever priority deadlines they have just in case they eventually implement a cap. My guess is that this will be more first come, first serve than competitive since this program has very low standards.

I asked about transfer credits, and he said that a graduate certificate could not be transferred in because it's masters-level. I told him that contradicts what's on the website and in their brochure. I advise skipping past admissions and contacting a dean or something.

One interesting thing he said was that the 100 Million Learners certificate program was designed to be transferred into their master's program.

 

Limiting access makes something exclusive, but not necessarily elite.

Being elite does not require exclusivity.

Excellence should be measure by outcomes, not inputs. The two are not mutually exclusive, for sure, one should not be confused with the other.

Lots of exclusive country clubs filled to the rafters with poopy heads.

(None of this is meant to be an argument for or against Thunderbird.)

 

True, but I'd argue that there generally isn't a huge difference in educational quality among various traditional universities offering online programs. The outcomes are often driven by the input (higher-performing students who were already doing well on the job market). Sometimes, the outcome is influenced by the reputation of the students. For example, a big tech company did not like recruiting at HBCUs, not only because they weren't well-ranked in engineering and CS, but also because their graduates kept failing the technical interviews. That reputation hurt the graduates who could potentially pass those interviews because they weren't given the opportunity to interview.

Before dropping six figures on a doctoral business degree, I'd consider these things.

1. Can I learn a lot from classmates who haven't gone far in the business world and may not even have work experience or education in business?
2. Will I benefit from networking with classmates who haven't gone far in the business world?
3. How will our reputation be several years after graduation, and how will that affect my ability to get the jobs I want?

If were fine with a practically open admissions program, I'd just choose the cheapest one that met my minimum requirements (regionally accredited, not-for-profit, etc.).

 

I really question how many of their students are self-pay.

Economist Magazine ranks Thunderbird in the top 50 business schools in the country and top 100 in the world. At one time it was considered one of the best MBA programs around. That surely has changed over time, but its reputation hasn't disappeared and it's ranking is still quite high.

I would hope that "etc." includes AACSB. You know, like Thunderbird.

 

Can you link to The Economist ranking? Thunderbird no longer offers an MBA because it's no longer needed after the school merged with ASU. The most recent MBA ranking I could find was for 2014. The most recent ranking of any kind I could find is for their executive program in 2018. The Economist has not been kind to Thunderbird.

https://www.economist.com/whichmba/thunderbirds-no-go

https://www.economist.com/whichmba/thunder-stolen-new-thunder-sought

https://www.economist.com/whichmba/thunderbird-shorts-market

https://www.economist.com/whichmba/thunderbirds-have-gone

The only recent ranking of any real value that Thunderbird has on its website is the QS ranking for international trade. The WSJ ranking is old, and the other rankings are for things like "most innovative school," but even that ranking is for ASU and not specifically for Thunderbird. Now that I'm digging more into these rankings, most of them are for ASU.

 

Does AACSB know about the DPP yet, or will it not be listed until the first cohort graduates? W.P. Carey's doctoral program is listed on the AACSB website but not Thunderbird's.

https://www.aacsb.edu/accredited/t/thunderbird-school-of-global-management-arizona-state-university

 

Speaking of The Economist...

Few business school deans will weep over the death of The Economist‘s ranking, even those who sometimes benefited from the magazine’s inconsistent and unpredictable results. But there is a reason why business schools should not celebrate The Economist‘s decision yesterday to abandon its rankings of MBA programs, Executive MBA options, and Master’s In Management programs. Even though this ranking is arguably the weakest of the most influential and consulted lists of MBA quality, The Economist brand bestows a certain gravitas on business education.

https://poetsandquants.com/2022/07/14/an-obituary-for-the-economists-mba-ranking/

 

Perhaps things have changed. I don't know. I'm not trying to convince anyone to change their minds.