Graduate School: PhD in Curriculum and Instruction

Dear friends,

I hope this message finds you well. Little Shakespeare here! I've missed you all! How's everyone doing? I was doing some more soul searching for these past few weeks, and I'd love to share my thoughts with you.

In case you didn't read my previous post, I'm a high school English teacher from New Jersey. I love my job with all my heart. I get to work with kids and books. It's been a blessing. However, I know that I don't want to teach high school forever, so I wanted a degree that will help me open more doors for myself.

I absolutely adore books. I cannot describe it. I am getting teary-eyed just writing this to you, but English literature brings me the greatest happiness that I have never imagined possible. There are so many books out there that I wish I could get my hands on, and maybe I'll never get to all of them! But I majored in English in college, then I got a master's in humanities. Now, I am seeking higher education for myself.

I was enrolled in ODU's online program in English, but I got terribly sick and ended up in the hospital. Therefore, I had to drop ODU's program. However, it was kind of serendipitous because I realized that ODU doesn't have the curriculum I like. I'm very much a traditionalist when it comes to literature, but ODU focused mainly on game studies and rhetorical theory.

So, I took some time to focus on my health. I am working on recovering. I also visited many universities and spoke to career counselors, colleagues, and professors of mine. They told me to reflect on what I want most out of life. Here's what I want most: I would love a degree that will help me become a stronger teacher and possibly open the door to academia. It would be a dream to be a professor, although I know it's a long shot.

I found this lovely program at SUNY Albany that's fully online. It's a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction. I took your advice and looked at some PhD programs as opposed to Ed.D programs. I spoke to many of the professors there, and they told me that this degree can help me implement what I learn in my very classroom and open those doors for academia. I can even work as a curriculum specialist and developer, thus itching my literature scratch.

Maybe I'm thinking out loud here, but it pains me to let go of my dream of obtaining a PhD in English literature. This is something I have always wanted. Life led me in another direction though. I became a teacher instead; I just could not get into a good graduate school with funding after college. I've tried and tried, but becoming a teacher was my Plan B. My professor from NYU once told me that a PhD in English is a full-time job. I'm making a decent salary now as a teacher, so I cannot simply get rid of my high school job to pursue a PhD in English full-time and be a starving grad student again.

As I work on recovering and getting healthy again, I really would love to hear your thoughts. It would mean so much to me. In the long run, I feel that getting that PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from SUNY will be beneficial to my career, but I'd love to hear what you think.

Thank you so much for reading. You are all truly amazing, and I am so grateful.

 

I worry that if you're not doing a PhD in English that you'll always feel that twinge of regret. Either way I know you'll make the right choice for you and I look forward to hearing about how it goes!

 

Since you are from NJ, perhaps Drew University is nearby? They have a D.Litt. which may be of interest: https://drew.edu/caspersen/arts-letters/

This might be the only Doctor of Letters program in the USA. Historically, especially in the British schools, the D.Litt. has been seen as even higher than a Ph.D. or D.Phil.

 

You're too kind, my dear friend! Thank you so much!!!

 

Oh wow, this looks so cool! I never knew that Drew had this program. I applied there for my undergrad years ago. I'll definitely look into it. Maybe this can scratch my literature itch!

 

Hello, friend! I was thinking about your words today, and I think you're absolutely right. I don't want to spend the rest of my life regretting that I didn't go for a PhD in the subject that brings me the most joy. I think I want to go for it.

I know that I cannot sacrifice my teaching job to go to graduate school full-time, but I remember a wonderful user here (I think it was TEKMAN) who told me that perhaps I can get my PhD from a UK school via distance-learning. I just feel hesitant because my NYU professors were telling me it's a bad idea, like always. They even told me Old Dominion is downgrading.

So many decisions to make!

 

Probably because it is.

Much of the traditional PhD experience is the non-academic aspect--networking, working with peers and mentors, teaching, participating in symposia and colloquia, etc. Much of that is missing when doing a PhD via distance learning. This can really handicap a future academic's prospects after graduation.

These limitations are bound to be exacerbated by doing a degree that is a) from a foreign school and b) in a thesis-only format. (Especially the first one. You'll be doing a degree that feeds its graduates into a system you are not a part of!)

That said, you've been describing a complex, not complicated dilemma. Most challenges we face are on a single continuum: from simple to complicated. Easy to hard. The harder, more complicated they are, the more difficult they are to overcome. But we know what we're doing, what it takes, and where we'll end up. Complexity is another matter.

With complex challenges, we're heading into the unknown and will need to develop new ways of discerning our purpose, direction, and goal. One way to do this is to apply "safe-to-fail" experiments to see what works, what results, and what we should do. We cannot see the end from the beginning. Like driving into a fog, clarity only comes as we go forward.

So, how does this apply here? Well, a couple of ways. First, try to pay attention to this holistically. We typically try to think our way through challenges like this, but you might want to pay attention to how you feel about things. Second, try some things. Have conversations with people who can provide you insight. Take a course in a subject you might want to pursue. Write in a journal about what you uncover. Do some mental exercises. Here's one. Ask yourself these questions (and pay attention to how you feel about the answers):

1. What do you want to do all day? What activities get your motor running?
2. With whom to you wish to do it?
3. Where do you wish to do it? (This could be a big question, like a city/country, or a small one, like the type of workplace.)
4. How much money do you want to make?

Similarly, the Japanese on Okinawa have a concept called Ikigai, your true purpose in life. It is the convergence of:

• What you love to do
• What people need from you
• What society needs from you
• What you can get paid to do

Advice is great if it comes from a reliable--and relatable--source. But your true answers must come from within. Good luck with your journey!

 

Here's a helpful article that nicely lays out some of the cons of taking the PhD route when it isn't called-for. You may want to consider it as well;

https://archive.is/5wZVO

Quote: "At the very least, I urge you to have honest conversations -- with friends, family, a therapist, yourself -- about why it is that you want to pursue a doctorate. Whether it be validation, not being sure what else to do or something else, I suspect that when you look deep enough, you will find the reasons unconvincing. The counterargument to this advice is that although a Ph.D. degree is generally designed to prepare you for a career as a professor, the skills you obtain are invaluable to other domains. It would be foolish to argue against this assertion, particularly if you already have a Ph.D. But it also ignores a more relevant point: your time is finite, which means that making one choice means forgoing countless others. So saying that a Ph.D. program offers useful skills in the nonacademic job market does not mean that a Ph.D. is the best -- or most satisfying -- way to obtain skills that are valued in the nonacademic job market.

Take my own experience in pursuing a doctorate in cognitive psychology, and notice how the skills that some might say prepared me for the nonacademic job market often fell short.

• Writing. I read articles by people who never learned to write well, and I learned to write from the same people who wrote said articles.
• Presenting information. I taught undergraduate sections to students who evaluated me once per semester, and if the research is right, on characteristics that had little to do with my ability to teach.
• Critical thinking. Academics do not have a monopoly on critical thinking, and unlike nonacademic settings, the problems are often too remote for there to be any consequences to errors in thinking.
• Leadership. Explaining to a group of high-achieving and reliable undergraduates how to run an experiment hardly qualifies as leadership training.

I could go on, but you get the point.

So rather than twist your credentials to suit the nonacademic job market, my advice is to not get a Ph.D. in the first place. Yes, a Ph.D. will introduce you to interesting people and ideas, but interesting people and ideas exist outside academe, and a choice to go in one direction is also a choice to not go in so many others."

 

Skills are only half the argument.

You can get skills in many places, but you go to a university to get a degree.

The degree acts as a proxy; it tells people about you when you're not there to do it yourself. It speaks on your behalf. But what's the message? That depends on the receiver.

A PhD can tell people you're somebody in your field, a force to be reckoned with. It can also say you're a useless, out-of-touch pinhead. Just as an associate's degree can say, "You didn't finish school," a PhD can say, "You stayed in school too long." This, even if it isn't actually true.

For me, it's been both. Earning a PhD--even from a school no one's ever heard of--was transformative professionally. But in some circles it also raised suspicion and stereotypical thinking. Ironically, I've never been an academic. I've never even been a full-time student. I've never been a student on a college campus. I've worked since I was 16 and did all my education part-time (and through other nontraditional means). The only experience on campus I've had is teaching Air Force ROTC for a few years. Yet, every once in a while, someone with their own issues will give you the side-eye.

And it's all-or-nothing, too. No one gets this kind of reaction to a master's degree. But a doctorate can bring either respect or a diss. It's worth it, though, for the career benefits and being more likely to do the work one loves. Besides, the respect tends to come from sources you'll appreciate, and the scorn from people who can do you no good anyway.

 

If you're trying to determine the value of a doctorate for yourself, you might also find this recently published research helpful.

"Worth doing but not worth having? The influence of personal aspirations and career expectations on the value of a doctorate"

https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/281353/2/281353.pdf

Quote: "A recurring concept was that respondents considered that their doctorate had been ‘worth doing’ for the value it conveyed to them personally, but not ‘worth having’ due to its low value to employers."

The authors found that the circumstances of respondents’ current employment are the most common predictor of overall perceived value and that those who reported that their doctorates were “not worth doing” attributed this to lack of a positive career outcome.

The survey consisted of 12 questions which collected respondents’ demographics (gender, nationality, ethnic background) details about their doctorate (discipline, country of degree award) and post-doctorate careers (years since graduation, number of jobs since graduation, current country of work, current work sector, current working pattern, current salary band). Following these demographic, study-mode, and career 7 details, four free text questions were deployed which interrelated the four domains of doctoral value described in Bryan and Guccione's model:

1. Between graduation and now how valuable has the doctoral experience been to you within your various job roles?
2. How valuable has your doctorate been in terms of social, personal, and professional networks?
3. Do you view yourself as changed, or different in the world because of your doctorate? And in relation to, and in comparison, to your family, friends, and society?
4. Overall, was the doctorate worth doing? Why / why not?

 

Yes, I don't think any job I will be doing after my PhD will be made easier by having the doctorate. I do think that the benefits of having it (personally and professionally) will outweigh the drawbacks, but the opportunity cost must be carefully weighed against doing anything else with several years of your life and tens of thousands of dollars.

 

What I loved about doing a doctorate was that the process caused me to get on top of my field and to understand its underlying dynamic. I don't know everything, but I know a lot, I know how to learn more, and I know how to create knowledge in my discipline.

 

You are all so fantastic. Thank you so much for everything.

I had an epiphany today. Perhaps my PhD shouldn't be in Curriculum and Instruction. I don't think I should go for this PhD because I'm not sure if I really want it.

There is so much I haven't told you, but the short version is that I've been exhausted from teaching high school and am seeking a career change. I thought the PhD in Curriculum and Instruction would be the way to go, but it won't be worth it if my heart isn't in it.