I caved and applied to ODU's Distance-Learning PhD. Did I do the right thing?

Greetings, everyone.

I hope this message finds you all well! I was wondering if I could seek some advice from you all. This website has been so helpful in allowing me to figure out my next move. I do apologize if this sounds redundant, but I was wondering if you could give me some advice.

I graduated from NYU with a master's degree in humanities. Some people said that NYU's humanities program is a cash-cow, a waste of money, etc. Regardless of what everyone told me, I consider NYU to be the biggest mistake of my life. I encountered the most pretentious and heartless people in the world, and I was so unhappy studying there. I took many classes irrelevant to my field of study. I just wanted the name on my resume, but it wasn't worth it in the end.

Anyway, for the past six years, I've been working as a high school English teacher. I'm very happy teaching high school. I found my true calling. I'm also working as an adjunct professor at a community college. Life has been pretty good, and I've been happy, but I still want my PhD.

For years, I have been going back and forth about Old Dominion University's online PhD in English. It sounds like a wonderful idea because I don't want to give up my career or put it on hold to pursue school. I'm just terrified if I'm making a mistake or settling because I cannot get funded elsewhere. In reality, I got into a few schools in the past, like Temple and St. John's, but I declined admission because the classes conflict with work.

I don't mind being a teacher for the rest of my life and educating children. I don't even know if I can get a tenure-track position at a university even with a tier-one school. But I'm still worried if ODU is going to be another mistake. I caved and applied anyway to see if I could get in.

Please advise me, everyone. I feel so lost.

 

What specifically makes you think that ODU is a mistake? They've been doing this a long time successfully so you're likely to have a decent shot at completing your PhD. What are your goals? No online PhD is likely to give you a good shot at academia, even one at a school with a brick and mortar presence. However, we do have people on this board who have done just that.

 

To decide on a doctorate, it is vital you know what you want to do with it. If not, someday you'll find yourself doing a second one!

Do you want the experience of doing the research and the degree? Do you want to continue your secondary education career? Do you want to become a scholar? Something else? You mention teaching children and tenure-track university positions. These are obviously two different things and which you pursue should heavily inform your choice of degrees.

Take everything I say next with a grain of salt. These are my opinions, and your experiences could vary greatly.

If you want to pursue an academic career then get a scholarly degree (the PhD) the traditional way--go be a grad student on campus somewhere and apprentice yourself for years.

You can obtain a university position--even one that might lead to a tenure opportunity, by getting a scholarly doctorate nontraditionally, but this is a much more difficult road to hoe. But if you're the kind of person some school would really, really want, they can hire you despite your lack of traditional academic bona fides. But this isn't well-documented because it happens both rarely and uniquely--everyone's story is different. So, I cannot suggest a path along these lines that would likely be successful.

If you're going to stay in the K-12 world, you have to ask yourself what you want to do. Do you want to stay in the classroom? Go into administration or leadership? An EdS designation or a Doctor of Education degree would likely be the way to go. These are designed for practitioners to advance practice in their fields while also advancing their careers.

It all starts with your vision of the future. Ask yourself these four questions:

1. What do you want to do all day?
2. With whom do you want to do it?
3. Where do you want to do it?
4. What do you want to get paid doing it?

And if you're successful and get offered a position at either the University of Gibraltar or the University of Monaco, see if they've got another one and let me know. Thanks!

 

Thank you so much, everyone! Forgive me for sounding too personal, but I have really bad self-confidence issues. I’ve had the meanest people tell me that I’m not good enough for NYU. I even had a professor there tell me how I got in. I just want to be a smart girl with a PhD in a subject she loves. The PhD is really just to continue studying and exploring a topic I really love. I’ve always wanted to cross off PhD from my bucket list.

 

From what you told us, I say go for it. If you can swing it financially, and desire to do it knowing that a chance of getting a TT university position is slim, I do not see why not.

There are people with doctorates on this forum, and hardly any of them have their degree from a Tier I place. So what? Most Ivy fetishists do not have a PhD (just like most people don't, in general), so why would you care? Outside academia proper, the number of people WITH a doctorate AND shallow enough to sneer at ODU are small enough so they're highly unlikely to affect your life in any significant way.

I know I tease Steve here about his online degree - but it's only because he got it onto himself to bully people for THEIR online degrees. I have no delusion that my teasing affects him in any significant way. He had some modest academic career, published some books, and had satisfaction from hanging his diploma in his trailer truck later on. These are things other people didn't do. Union-haters and DL-in-general-haters exist, but are easy enough to avoid. In the real world, a PhD is a PhD. Besides, again, there is absolutely, truly, nothing wrong with ODU.

 

I think it's important to clarify that the Steve being mentioned here is not SteveFoerster from earlier in the thread.

 

Yes. Steve Levicoff.
Steve Foerster works on his doctorate from University of Cumberlands, a perfectly mediocre Christian school that is nevertheless "good enough" for most purposes. We only tease each other for our differing political views .

As for ODU... it is higher ranked than the campus I currently teach at. A position there would be a "reach". Based on "prestige" alone, I can see myself teaching at Cumberlands, Union, WGU, or your community college. It's all "higher education", full of people working on improving themselves.

 

I guess I’m also just worried because I’ve had people on the Grad Cafe forum tell me “full stop!” “Bad idea!” “You’re committing career suicide!” “You’re downgrading from a Maserati to a bus pass.” Many of them did have their PhDs, but the pretentiousness was evident. Even my professor at NYU told me not to, but it’s hard to see it from my perspective when he had all the opportunities in the world.

 

Thanks so much, everyone. I’m truly in great appreciation. I’m worrying and I haven’t even gotten accepted. I think I will pray about this and see what the universe wants me to do.

 

I don't think you would make a bad choice attending Old Dominion University for Ph.D. in English. You'll properly be going to get a full-time tenure track at certain universities, but not the top universities. If you worry about its reputation, why's not the University of London?
URL: https://london.ac.uk/courses/english-literature-american-literature-and-history-book

What's about Oxford University's Research Ph.D. focusing on English Literature
URL: https://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/about/dphil-in-continuing-education

 

I was thinking about going for a PhD from the UK, but the programs don’t require classes. I really want more course content before diving into my dissertation.

 

In these forums, it's easy to forget how small is the number of grad students and graduates in Humanities who post on forums. Compared to general population. For most people, a PhD from ODU is impressive, and not at all a "bus pass" - whatever that even means.

P. S. My cousin completed a PhD in Media Studies (effectively English) in the UK, and now teaches middle school in a disadvantaged district (also in UK). Most of us are blessed here.

 

I notice I've not received the same level of shade Steve draws. I also disagree with his assertions about "online degrees." Especially at the doctoral level, what is key is the work you do, not the medium in which you do it. I'm as proud of my Union PhD as Steve is, but I also know that those who do completely nonresidential doctoral degrees go through comparably rigorous processes. I also happen to agree with Steve that doctoral residencies are great and enhance your learning experience. But, unlike Steve, I don't draw a line at them.

No, there isn't. ODU is one of those schools you've heard of, but have no idea why. That's all good.

I've never received one bit of heat or shade about graduating from Union, except on fora like this. You'd think people here would know better.

Getting a degree from Union is like getting a degree from any other university no one's ever heard of. You know, as in "most of them."

I also hold a doctorate from a top British university. No one cares about that one, either. The only attention I get is in the pronunciation of Leicester, and the fact that the football team in that city won it all a few years ago. The fact that the university is ranked (currently) 170th in the world doesn't seem to matter. Nor should it. What did you do in it? What did you do with it? I have big answers regarding my Leicester experience; it was transformative.

 

The UK model for the PhD is the "big book" approach. That is, you write a much larger doctoral thesis than you would do in a "taught" program (with classes). Typically, they require 3 years of full-time study or 6 years part-time. You produce a thesis with a (typically) 100K-word limit.

If you have a need for further tuition (instruction), your thesis advisor will direct that. But, no, there is no prescribed curriculum.

But there are now quite a few "taught" doctorates offered by UK schools, where you have a learning block followed by a smaller (60K-word) thesis. These normally result in professional degree titles, rather than the PhD, but they are scholarly degrees. (You'll be expected to make a significant, new contribution to scholarship, not just practice, just like a PhD.)

Many UK schools are now offering stand-alone master's degrees at a distance. You might consider a school with one that you can do one and then plunge into the PhD, if that would suit you.

 

I recommend joining a LinkedIn group for people seeking tenure-track positions, especially those seeking positions in the humanities. There's an oversupply of PhDs and, contrary to popular belief, most humanities majors are not that popular. They're not attracting hundreds of thousands of students each year like business programs are.

 

There is a lot of phenomenal responses in this thread. I have not done a PhD nor am I really considering one right now. I do know that my Financial Management Professor in the MBA program I completed did his PhD in Finance at Old Dominion University. Highly intelligent and successful professor, in my opinion.

Grad Cafe, Reddit, etc. are full of folks who believe you have to go to the best to be the best, which we know is far from the truth. At the end of the day, you have to do what you truly want to do, not what others THINK you should do. It is not their time, money, and education…it is yours. If you want to do the ODU program, do it with a smile on your face and know that in the end you’ll join an elite, and super small, group of folks in the world that have a PhD.

 

Well, you can pretend you're a graduate from the College of Williams and Mary at Norfolk's Doctor of Philosophy in English.

 

I second these suggestions. The Univ. of London has a good distance and have been doing it for long.

As for the Oxford Dphil in Cont. Ed., however, I did contact them before - and learned that finding a matching supervisor was a challenge; at least at the time.

As for the OP's ODU situation, I am sorry to hear about your NYU experience - as well as the feedback received from GradCafe. Distance Learning is not for everyone, thus I reckon they are coming from a narrower lens in responding to your intent.

I personally think that if you get into the ODU programme, the next question is on the funding - as that is a make or break decision point. If the offer comes with scholarship, the decision would be made easier. If your plan is self-funding, I believe it is worth applying to 1-3 distance PhD programmes. Even if you do end up with ODU after all, you'd know that the choice was from a range of 1-3 applied programmes.

Good luck!

 

You are all so amazing. Thank you so much for your responses.