Harvard to discontinue the Harvard-invented Ed.D. degree

Discussion in 'Education, Teaching and related degrees' started by Anthony Pina, Mar 31, 2012.

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  1. Anthony Pina

    Anthony Pina Active Member

    Harvard University's School of Education, which invented the Ed.D. in 1920, in order to be able to offer and control its own doctoral degree (Harvard Corp. only allowed the College of Arts & Sciences to award the Ph.D.), has announced that it will be eliminating the Ed.D. and offering a new Ph.D. degree jointly with the College of Arts & Sciences.

    If the folks at Harvard would have though of this brilliant idea 90 years ago, we would likely never had been saddled with two education research doctorates (and maybe a true first-professional degree in education could have been invented).

    The country
     
  2. TL007

    TL007 New Member

    As a new doctoral student (Ed.D.), I am curious whether we will see a "trickle down" effect among institutions. Literature reviews indicate little, if any, difference in rigor/substance between the Ed.D. and Ph.D. A small group of universities (approximately 25) have been involved with the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED). CPED universities have specifically crafted their Ed.D. to be practitioner-focused and usually substitute a capstone experience for a dissertation/thesis. Most institutions continue to offer a program that is simply a Ph.D. by another name. Will this drive the conversion of Ed.D. programs to the Ph.D. or will it be the impetus behind a paradigm shift among Ed.D. granting institutions?
     
  3. Anthony Pina

    Anthony Pina Active Member

    It is difficult to tell what the real impact will be. There are a number of factors in play. What you have said about the Ed.D. vs. Ph.D. is true. I just read another study that compared Ed.D. and Ph.D. in a particular discipline and it merely affirmed what the rest have said: there is no evidence that a Ph.D. at one institution is significantly different then the Ed.D. at other. CPED programs like Vanderbilt (whose Ed.D. and Ph.D. were similar) have redesigned their programs to make them different. Will that cause programs that only offer the Ed.D. to drop their dissertation requirements? Likely not.

    Harvard invented the Ed.D. in 1920 as a reaction to their desire to have their own doctorate and because Harvard Corp only allows the College of Arts & Sciences to award the Ph.D. The fact that the Harvard Ed.D. has always been a Ph.D.-equivalent research degree does not support the "conventional wisdom" that the origin of the Ed.D. was to provide a "professional/applied/practitioner" degree. Harvard School of Education wanted it own doctorate and was not allowed to award the Ph.D., so the Ed.D. was born. The Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.) appears to have had similar beginnings.

    Now, the fine folks at Harvard have figured out that the School of Education and and College of Arts and Sciences can offer a "cooperative" Ph.D., so, apparently, they are scrapping the Ed.D. that they invented. It only took them 92 years to figure that out. They created this mess of having two degrees that appear to be equivalent in every way (except for popular perception). Will Harvard's abandonment of its degree (which, in my opinion, should have been the "joint" Ph.d. to begin with) affect other institutions? Perhaps, but not likely.

    It may be that the ability now given to nationally accredited institutions to award the Ed.D. may end up having a larger impact than the CPED, since we are likely to see an increase of non-research based Ed.D.s, thus adding further confusion to the already confused sector of doctoral-level education.
     

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