Is a DL Doctorate a New Kind of Animal?

But again, how rigid is a system that relies on dissertation advisors that are getting 2K a pop? Examiners also get paid peanuts and many of the dissertation advisors come from the same type of schools.
Some of these schools do not pay if the student doesn't graduate so there is enough motivation for me to approve something that might be substandard only because I don't want to waste my time and money.
The system needs to be revised, accreditors only look at the credentials of the advisors but do not see how the advisor is being compensated and do not evaluate the risk that an advisor and examiner might approve substandard work only because the way the system pays.

 

All true, but a school that indiscriminately passes substandard dissertations will ultimately not last, just look at the trouble that NCU was involved in a few years ago. I have no firsthand experience with this, but I hear that they really had to crack down on their dissertations or face the possibility of action from the accreditor. Randell tells us that the dissertation process is now extremely tough, possibly to the point of being ridiculous. So I'm assuming that fluffy dissertations are not present in most legit DL schools. As I said, I've yet to experience this for myself, but I'll report about the process at Liberty in about a year and a half. That information should be relevant although Liberty is not primarily an online school.

 

There is no reason for NCU and other for profit schools to be credible and respected. All they have to do is hire full time faculty with credible credentials and sacrifice profits for quality. They can just accept a limited number of candidates that are serious and promote research and academic standards. In the long run this would be more profitable than having a quick operation that might make them millions in 10 to 20 years but then just vanish as other schools start offering the same doctorates online.

The problem is that they are just too money hungry and need to report quick profits so they can get more investors. Their strategy suggest that they are just milking the cow and make as much money as they can.

Walden seems to be doing the right thing, they have been in business for decades and have a more consistent business model. They promote research by editing academic journals and hiring full time faculty that publish research. Walden is one of the most credible online schools and they seem to be looking for the long term and not just a quick buck.

 

This is the impression I also got after taking a couple of classes in a PhD program there.

 

While I respect you and your opinions (or at least the right to have an opinion) I think this is over the line and an overly general statement. If I want to be insulted I will call my mother :headbang:

 

Also, while I don't like the practices at NCU, I don't agree with your trashing the quality of the degree. The administration may leave much to be desired, but the classes and the dissertation process are rigorous. I can speak to the quality of the classes and Randell can speak to the rigor of the dissertation process.

 

Actually, I think that you mean "assistant professor," rather than "associate professor." The assistant professor is the entry level. I actually know several community college and university faculty at my public institutions who were promoted to associate professor after completing a DL doctorate, but they were faculty who were already assistant professors and were hired in departments that allowed them to come in with a masters degree. A DBA in accounting from Argosy would have a much easier time getting a position than a DBA in business administration.

 

I agree with you basic premise, but the data on earned doctorates supplied by the U.S. Dept. of Ed. does not support the idea that "online schools crank out hundreds of DL doctorates a year and traditional schools only about 5 per year." U.C. Berkeley and U. of Michigan each "cranked out" over 800 doctoral degrees in 2009. Over 50 others awarded more than 300 apiece. How many fully online universities were in this group? One (Capella). If you count Phoenix as an online university, it also (barely) makes the group. The next largest of the virtuals (Walden & Northcentral) do not even crack the top 100 doctoral degree suppliers. Overall, the DL doctrate sector provides only between 2-3% of the total number of annual doctorates. However, the percentage is much higher when it comes to doctorates in business.

 

I am fortunate in that I work for an institution that has taken the approach that you have described in your first paragraph. Hiring full-time faculty, providing full staffing for student and faculty academic support, limiting enrollments in all online course sections, rejecting undergraduate applicants who do not pass the entrance exams, rejecting graduate applicants who do not meet GPA requirements, limiting the size of the PhD program and rejecting PhD applicants who do not meet academic and work experience qualifications (we just rejected three) are definitely not good business strategies for those wanting to make quick profits. Of course, my institution is not publicly traded, nor is it a subsidiary of some large corporation in another state.

The lack of a "quick buck" mentality may explain why my institution has 6,000 students, rather than 60,000, but it may also explain why we will be celebrating our 50th year in a few months (older even than Walden). As you have pointed out, not all "for-profits" act like Phoenix or Kaplan.

 

You mean you would take exception to SpongeBob, PhD? The nerve of some people!

 

I'm curious how people who have DL doctorates from NCU or Argosy, etc. can speak to the rigor of their dissertation process if they only have one doctorate and have never experienced the process at a non-profit traditional university. Does anyone have two Ph.D.s? One from a DL for-profit and one via traditional methods? I'd believe their testimony over someone just expressing that their dissertation was a challenge.

 

I was thinking the same thing as well as how can people with traditional PhDs speak to the rigor of a DL one. I have a clue of the rigor of the traditional ones since I have a friend getting her EdD from USF. She has the luxury of meeting with her committee/chair on a regular basis which would be nice. I guess all judgement is made on DL PhDs based on the fact that they employee most adjuncts who must not care about quality.

 

I think that Dr. Bear came up with the idea of doing a random blind sample of dissertations - some from DL programs, some from B&M programs and using a panel of judges to determine quality. It could yield some very interesting results.

 

Actually, it could be a lot easier than this. We could chose a random sample of dissertations from DL schools and calculate some metrics such a number of citations from peer reviewed articles to those dissertations, number of peer reviewed articles that were published based on dissertations, etc. Then we can compare this to a chosen number of dissertations from B&M Universities and conduct a t test for the difference of means to justify if there is a significant variation.

This is actually a good research study that could lead to a publication. I will consider to it myself and share the results in the future.

 

You are right in the sense that the assumption is based on personal bias. I have been a external examiner for a for profit and for a traditional school. There were many differences in particular related to compensation, time required to submit reports, quality of the reviews, etc. I found that the for profit requirements were a lot weaker but this is only one sample and cannot be generalized. My assumption was that because all the people involved in the for profit review were adjuncts, the level of commitment was a lot lower than the traditional schools and this could lead to poor controls when it comes to accepting a dissertation.

A research study would need to be conducted to evaluate the quality of dissertations generated at both type of institutions to make a more fair judgment.

 

Thanks for sharing this. I believe that this approach would make DL doctorates more credible. External doctorates have existed for decades in Australia, UK and SA and nobody would question there the quality of these programs just because they are external (DL in the American lingo), this is because the same on campus quality standards apply to external programs.

 

I believe that using one personal experience of a DL dissertation is indeed a bias opinion that cannot be used to evaluate the quality of the program. Even if the person had two PhDs, the opinion could not be use to generalize the quality of an institution.

I'm guilty of this, I have seen the amount of work that some people put in their dissertations. I have seen people struggling to publish in good journals, present at conferences, apply for research grants and take up to 6 years full time to finish a doctorate. I cannot compare this to my own dissertation that was completed part time and did not require me to present at conferences or publish in top journals. There are differences among programs, full time PhDs require full time commitment for a period of at least 4 years and people admitted are normally chosen over hundreds of candidates. The differences in admissions and processes suggest that there are indeed differences otherwise we could just say that the full system is wrong as we could run the entire education system with poorly paid adjuncts and achieve the same educational experiences.

 

How do you post those smileys with their signs?

 

Google an image. Copy the URL. Click on the "Insert Image" button and insert the URL into the pop-up window.