Fastest PhD

support my assertion

Actually, my statement was more of a conclusion drawn from reading the variety of opinions on various forums here...with the majority consensus seeming to be this:

If you really want to teach and have credibility at a traditional B&M e.g major state universities, ivy league, etc. then go to a traditional B&M, as a DL won't cut it.

However, I threw this tentative conclusion out here to see if it would hold water, or if I was somehow drawing the wrong conclusion from the overall views expressed throughout. Obviously the previous statement about many of the foreign DL programs having credibility at US tradional B&Ms begins to put holes in my conclusion.

 

Re: Re: Re: Getting more confused

Also you have to factor in that Capella, TUI and NCU have not been around that long. Nova has. I hear that Nova grads experienced bias when the school was new but not so much now.
A better comparison would be a B&M school not famous for providing non-traditional education vs. an old distance learning school such as Walden (which has been around for 30 years I believe).

In the end this might indicate something that we already know too well, that DL doctorates in academia (regardless of where they came from) are still not common, nor will they ever be.

-S

 

Re: support my assertion

David,

External degrees have been around for long time in the UK and Australia. Also, they are not exactly online degrees, courses are not given as in the online schools in the US. Courses at UK and Australian institutions run in parallel with on campus courses so the exams and assignments are exactly the same but with the difference that external students do their exams with proctors close to their locations. So in a way, it is traditional since you are still required to complete the same amount of work that on campus students need to submit.

On the other hand, PhD programs at places like Capella or TUI use the online approach where students conduct all their work online and courses are adjusted to this environment. So it seems that some of the concerns are that some people don't believe that you could learn the same by using the online approach. However, as time goes by, the online model will be perfected and be accepted as an effective way of learning.

 

I cannot resist from responding to this thread as it repeatedly hits my private email box. The idea that earning a degree from certain universities including ivies guarantees an employment is an illusion and you will be in for a disappointment if that is your aim. From what I read sometimes in this forum, it is obvious many people do not understand how employment process work. No one throws away application for employment or resumes because it is not from certain schools. That is ridiculous. Can you name any employer? I am an immigrant, a minority, with accent and hold no ivy degree. I have done incredibly well. So are my relatives and close friends all with non ivy degrees. Worst of all we have no people in high places. We are all recent immigrants. If many of the things being said about schools, degrees and employers in this forum were even one quarter true we would be lucky to be managing grocery stores with our degrees somewhere. In the interest of full disclosure, I hold an MBA from an AACSB school. I have multiple degrees and certificates from three schools. With that being said, most of my relatives and friends hold business degrees from non AACSB schools and they are employed in the big five accounting firms, brokerage and investment houses, etc. They make money – good money. None of them is unemployed or under employed. If they wanted to teach tomorrow, to hell with any school who would not hire them because of non AACSB school accreditation. It is the school that loses not my relatives. AACSB accreditation has not done anything for me. You had to flip to the back of the transcript to find it with magnifying glass among the myriad of necessary and unnecessary accreditations of the school.

I have had the privilege of rating applicants in a team both in the private and public sectors. Never once have I ever received instruction to throw away any applicant from any school or to under rate an applicant based on the school from which he or she obtained the degree nor the mode of instruction. Points are usually awarded for degrees and other factors. I work with graduates of ivy league schools every day. They are my colleagues. They do not hold any of the views being expressed in this forum.

I am in the health field and my PhD in progress is in the health sciences. You know what, it is already yielding dividends. The reason I respond forcefully to some of the misinformation in this forum is because I do not want one person to have the misconception they have to have an ivy degree to be successful. The U.S government presidential cabinet is full of people with no ivy degrees. Can someone tell me please that if Paul O’Neil, former treasury secretary wanted to teach at Harvard that he will not be employed? He holds no ivy or AACSB accredited degree to the best of my knowledge. Before someone is quick to say we cannot be cabinet secretaries, I say speak for yourself. You do not know what any of us can do or does. When you look at the schools that are ACSB accredited, you wonder why so much importance is placed on it. I won’t name any school. Even some professors have started complaining about AACSB. Why did AACSB change their name and start soliciting applicant’s world wide? Because most U.S schools and employers have determined it has no value. There are less than 500 schools worldwide that are AACSB out of thousands of schools. Why? They have now started accrediting courses. Why? Money. They have to exist. Why accredit program and then courses within the program?

If AACSB is important for you, ok. But don’t tell those that do not have it that their education is inferior or their application will be thrown away for lack of it. That is ridiculous. Don’t tell people unless they graduate form certain schools, they can’t get a job. That is even more ridiculous. I was told these nonsense in the eighties. Gosh. I am glad I did not believe those loose talks.

As far as I am concerned, any accredited degree is fine. The mode of obtaining that degree is irrelevant. My wife had her degree in a mixture of DL and B&M. She passed her professional exam in one attempt with a very high score. She is gainfully employed and make good money. Together we are in one of the highest percentile of income in the US according to US Census data. Tell me education has no value. Tell me it has to be ivy only.

My degree (includes my PHD in progress) is as good as anyone else including ivies. For anyone to claim he or she is better than me, they would have to demonstrate their contributions to their chosen professions is more or superior to my contributions to my chosen profession. Simply flashing what he or she may perceive as a “brand name” degree is not enough. This whole debate about AACSB and others like it repeatedly is really getting to be childish.

To anyone who cares to listen, please get your degree in any accredited school. Be good in your profession and more importantly, get your degree in less saturated profession, program or filed and employers will beg for your services. Obtain your degree based on your personal and financial consideration not what other people are saying. Forget about the pocket of uninformed employers that may one way or the other find an excuse not to hire you. Remember not every employer will hire you regardless of where you obtained your degree. We have had to send letters of rejections to ivies in the past.

Let us focus on putting out of business fraudulent schools giving distance education bad name and focus less on this mine is better than yours nonsense. At the end of the day a degree is a degree. I talk from experience which is broad. I do not talk in abstracts.

Never apologize for getting your degree at where you got it and the mode of instruction you got it. Be good in what you do and you will go great heights. This is my advise. Good day every one.

 

Delusioned

Oko,

Do you seriously think that the school where you get your degree has no bearing on your employabilty? This is simply not true. Fact, a holder of a PhD in Business from Harvard will have more offers than he/she needs. Fact, a graduate of TUI's business program will have to work extra hard to prove he has what it takes. Some won't even give him the chance. Fact of life and it is a fact that we all have to live with.

A CPA is not a PhD and AACSB really doesn't have as much to do with a CPA anyway. CPA's have their own exam to prove their quality. And the current shortage of accountants skews the results to their favor. A CPA from Podunk U can get a job today. Let that shortage disappear though and see if things don't change rapidly. Harvard degree's in overage skills aren't a ticket to success either. It is all about supply and demand.

Having an AACSB accredited degree isn't a sure thing either. Not all AACSB accredited schools are the same. A degree from Harvard is going to get you a lot more than one form the University of Southern Mississippi. However, if the school wants someone with a degree from an AACSB school guess where your CV will go if you don't have one? File 13, that's where.

Can one succeed without premier credentials? Sure, but you have to work harder at it. Really, this argument that there isn't a difference in how schools are viewed has been disproven time and time again. Can't wish it away not matter how hard you try.

DTechba

 

Oko,

You are taking this personal, this is not a personal attack for those attending TUI, NCU or any other internet school. Getting a job in academia is not the same as getting a job in industry, in industry they can care less if your degree is from TUI as long as you can probe yourself. The issue is that many of the board members are looking for a PhD because they want to switch to academia and they want to make sure that they are investing their time and money in the right choise.

If statistics show that there are a lot more people teaching full time with credentials from schools like Nova, Henley, etc then it is normal to assume that there is less risk going to traditional schools that has been tested in the market. I don't doubt that a TUI graduate might be able to teach at Harvard but most of us are not so brilliant so we need the most help we can get to achieve our goals.

 

Believe me, I am not taking it personal. I just don't want one ambitious person who does not know any better to be misled with some of the inaccuracies here about schools and finding jobs. True. If a school wants AACSB as their criteria, and you don't have it you may not be considered. That is less than 500 schools out of thousands worldwide. Not all of the these less than 500 schools require it any way. In many cases you could even overcome that requirement by superior contributions to your profession. If one school does not accept you go to another. If one employer does not hire you go to another. You are not always going to be hired by everyone regardless of where you went. It is not about me. I have an AACSB MBA. I am not going to sit here in my office and say unless your school is AACSB, you can't teach, can't get a job etc, etc.

I don't know whether the name of my schools has anything to do with my success because these schools are not exactly household names. Far from it. I am not even sure if they register in any rankings. I don’t read rankings. They are all regionally accredited. That is all I care. As an undergraduate, my friends and I were told by many that we will end up not finding jobs because of the school we attended being historically black college and other nonsense. That has not happened to any of us.

I work in a research oriented public health environment. All I see here is people hard at work. When we screen people for employment, we do not screen for ivy leagues. We screen for requirements.

When I was in a hospital environment. We screen regardless of where you went. I do not believe that in companies they throw away your resume as it is being said in this forum. Otherwise, the examples I gave in my earlier post won’t be possible. It takes no time for any of my friends and family members to get jobs. While a Harvard graduate may get a job even before s/he graduates, I do not believe getting a job within 90 days of graduation in nearly all of my examples is particularly a long time and exacting. Why worry over 90 day’s differential? Some even got jobs before they graduated as well.

I do not consider it as luck that all of my close friends and family found jobs. I consider it hard work and the reward of education. The funny thing about this debate is every school that I have attended I have been taught by ivy league graduates. The truth is American education has been proven to be superior regardless of where you went and the income over time narrows. This is because of many years of cross pollinations between ivies and the likes and non ivies. This is my personal theory any way.

I have posted in this forum in the past research by a Washington based think tank on the issue of ivy vs. non ivy degrees over time. The truth is it is harder to get a job if you read saturated or less than marketable program regardless of where you went or how you went to school.

My mission is to help dispel the misinformation that you can’t get a job or it will be difficult to get a job for going to certain school and not the other. Read a marketable course and you will find out otherwise.

It is well known fact that it is hard for minorities to get a job regardless of where they went. Should minorities spend their time worrying about that while in school? A black woman just got sworn in as US Secretary of States. Suppose her parents told her 45 years ago that it makes no sense going to school because there were too much racism and that whites will get better jobs than her or her resume will be thrown away when she is perceived to be black. Think about it. This is my point my friends.

oko

 

Good Point

I totally agree.
I think your post made a very good point and offered to the original poster a good perspective.

 

Re: Getting more confused

You have at least one another viable choice: Select a B&M university that also has a DL program. University of Nebrasks-Lincoln is a good example of this kind of choice.

Tony Pina
Administrator, Northeastern Illinois University

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Getting more confused

There are still individual programs that discriminate, for whatever reason, against Nova grads (I know one college of education in my state where the dean has stated that they would not consider a Nova PhD or EdD for a full-time tenure-track position). I lament this, since NSU's program in Instructional Technology & Distance Learning has some well-regarded faculty and are doing some important work on the field of distance learning (including the editing of a scholarly journal in the field).

Although I have never attended NSU, I have several colleagues who have and who are successful in their careers.

I believe that the trend towards unacceptance of DL doctorates in academia will change as the "old guard" slips into retirement. If those with doctorates from Touro, Capella, Walden, NCU would produce good quality published research, present regularly at professional conferences, hold leadership positions in professional assoication and do the other things to build up program and scholarly recognition, then you would see more graduates in academia.

The other (critical) piece of the puzzle is up to the virtual universities themsleves. The faculty who teach full-time at these institutions must become far more active in their professional communities. If a DL program is staffed exclusively by adjuncts who neither publish nor present, then it is unlikely that the program will gain any recognition at all in academia. I do not see a lot of faculty from these universities at the professional conferences. Why not? I see Nova Southeastern people and Western Governors people and those programs have become more esteemed in the field of instructional technology.

Tony Pina
Administrator, Northeastern Illinois University

 

You have at least one another viable choice: Select a B&M university that also has a DL program. University of Nebrasks-Lincoln is a good example of this kind of choice.

Thanks Tony for this info. I have been wondering how many B&M universities are starting to offer or have been offering DL programs, but are not marketed on the web as well as schools like Capella and NCU. I'll check them out.

 

Bears' Guide to Earning Degrees by Distance Learning is a useful guide to these programs. I have used it for many years. Dr. Bear is a frequent poster here.

Tony

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Getting more confused

It seems that TUI is doing an effort to have full time staff in order to add credibility to their programs. Adjuncts are a lot cheaper, a school like UoP would pay an adjunct about 1500 dlls per course. Using adjuncts has been the secret to make money in the DL business. However, some schools are realizing that they need full time staff to make their schools more credible in academia.

 

I also agree with Oko. It´s truly nice to see his spirit. He´ll succeed no matter what. And I think he has a point. My wife was a postgraduate student at the LSE in London, perceived by many as an elite university. Her profesors are often on TV (BBC, CNN, etc...) when political opinion is needed on diverse affairs. They are truly world authorities in their fields, same as her doctoral supervisor. She has as well a master´s degree from an American average university. Everything on campus, of course. The thing is that she doesn´t feel that she got worse education at this American University than at the LSE, an extremely competitive university, where she graduated with distinction. Like Oko I think the world is for those who dare to conquest it.