Is a DL Doctorate a New Kind of Animal?

Can you produce those statistics or other hard evidence to support what you are saying? I'd like to see.

 

It really depends upon the discipline. There are many, many journals out there. Since I publish in the areas of instructional technology and distance learning, I have dozens of peer-reviewed journals from which to chose. Peer-reviewed online open-access journals have become much more prevalent and are generally accepted, except in the case of specific academic departments that have preferred journals in which their faculty nd students should publish.

 

Perhaps, but my experience has included a number of K-12 teachers, community college faculty and administrators and university faculty and administrators with doctorates from Nova, Walden and Capella (institutions with which I have no affiliation) that were colleagues of mine when I worked for non-profit higher educational institutions.

The latest data from the National Center for Education Statistics listed the total combined 2009-2010 doctoral completions for Capella, Walden, Phoenix, Northcentral and TUI at 2,005. Capella has had the most DL doctoral grads for a few years, but the biggest increase has been Walden, which passed U. of Phoenix Online as the 2nd largest DL doctoral granting institution in the U.S. So I will have to amend a previous post in which I stated that only Capella and Phoenix made it to the top 50 doctoral granting institutions. Walden is now there, too.

 

People will just complain that another sticky thread has been created which is soooooooo hard to scroll past.

 

This seems like a great idea.

 

You would have to search for related discussions. As Randell said, it is the same thing that we have discussed over the last 10 years.

 

Ok, now I've got this in context. You are speaking mostly from anecdotal evidence and personal opinion. Nothing wrong with that. I wonder if there is much research on this subject, as you and others have said, it would be an interesting study to undertake. I'm going to begin looking around myself. A quick search of Google Scholar did not uncover anything specific to the relative quality between DL dissertations and B&M dissertations.

 

Check the thread below:
http://www.degreeinfo.com/distance-learning-discussions/35145-too-many-people-online-dbas-phds.html

A while ago, I did a small experiment and searched for resumes with doctoral degrees in BA from a resume database. I did not calculate statistics but the random sample that I selected showed that most of them came from online schools. Some members argued that the database is not reliable as people with B&M PhDs wouldn't be looking for work by using a resume site but I believe it gives a good sense of what is happening out there.

 

Thanks, I remember participating in that thread a tiny bit. The only person I could find, as I review the thread again, who provided reliable data was Dr. Pina. The only other numbers were from Wikipedia, not exactly a trusted source. Here's what Dr. Pina said:

"As far as the glut of DL doctorates, there actually is data about this. The U.S. Dept. of Education and the National Science Foundation publishes the survey of earned doctorates and the National Center for Education Statistics keeps track of the number of doctoral degrees awarded by each institution. Of the 48,000+ U.S. doctoral degrees that were earned in 2008, how many were DL doctorates awarded by for-profit universities? Less than 2,000.

Of the top 100 doctoral grantiing universities, how many were DL for-profits? Two (Capella & Phoenix). Northcentral and Walden (the next two largest) do not even crack the top 100. TUI and Jones International each award less than a couple dozen doctorates each year. Kaplan and Strayer do not offer doctorates. Most of Argosy 's doctoral degrees are not fully DL.

The fact is that for-profit DL doctorates do not currently constitute a significant portion of the doctoral population. Will that change? Perhaps, but not likely, since many B&M universities are actively developing their own online doctoral programs."

 

Yes, but this comparison is not valid as the full spectrum of doctorates include humanities, music, arts, economics, engineering, computer science, etc while the online for profits mainly graduate business and education doctorates. Business and Education doctorates only count for a small percentage so the 2000 could be significant.

We would need to know how many doctorates were granted in business and education and then compare it with the DL doctorates. Also, 2008 is far away as the number of doctorates have increased considerably in the recent years.

Obviously there is enough data out there to make a case and probe the point and may be a topic for a good research paper in the field.
However, people will still enroll in these programs regardless of what research shows, I still see a lot of people taking DETC or low tier MBAs when research shows that they have negative ROI.

 

So this whole discussion is based on personal opinions and not hard data, which is fine. I certainly have no data to offer. I would love to see some reliable statistics on the subject. If you run across some more current data, I hope you will share it with us. Fascinating stuff.

 

You can easily see the historical number of business doctorates, simply by looking at Table 301 in the US Dept of Education's "Digest of Education Statistics".

An interesting pattern emerges. There was a peak in business doctorates in 1994-95, at 1,391. But then production actually shrank, reaching a low of 1,156 in 2001-02.

However, business doctorates then began to grow again -- fast. A new all-time record was set in 2003-04. That record was broken in 2004-05 -- and it was broken again in 2005-06, and again in 2006-07, and again in 2007-08, which is the last year that records are available.

So something happened, beginning in the early 2000s, that caused a major increase in the number of business doctorates issued by US universities. Between 2001-02 and 2007-08, the number rose from 1,156 to 2,084. That's an 80% increase in just 6 years.

If this is true (and it probably is), then the increase in business doctorates in the 2000s would be even more striking.

It's clear that something happened, during the past 10 years, to suddenly and dramatically increase the number of business doctorates issued by US universities. What could it possibly be ?

 

Don't bother, they will say that this is not enough evidence. For the few things that I have seen, it is clear enough that there is a degree factory going on but some just want to keep their eyes closed.

 

It is clear the options for online school have caused the increase but the degree factory mindset is an opinion. Is it so far from reality that intelligent, hard working people with potiental never had (because it was not practical because they had a career) the option to quit their job, move to who-knows-where and go to a school for several years? Is it so far from reality that these people now have an option and are taking advantage of it? Is it possible that the failure rate should be higher in DL programs because of open enrollment? If it was open enrollment and everyone finished would be be more terrified?

I see DL PhD as being an option for mid career people that do not have an intention of getting a B&M job at a research facility.

 

According to the Survey of Earned Doctorates, approximately 8,000 doctorates were awarded in business and education in 2009. If only half of the 2,000 DL doctorates were awarded in business and education it would still be a grossly disproportionate percentage of the total given the number of B&M vs. DL institutions that offer doctorates. However, I suspect that the proportion of business and education doctorates awarded by DL institution is significantly greater than 50%.

 

You may be right, but let me finish here.

Now, you can see the number of degrees issued by individual schools at the US Dept. of Education's "College Navigator" site.

I checked out the numbers of business doctorates issued in 2009-10 by approximately 30 well-known B&M universities: those in the Big 10, and the University of California system, and the Ivy League. None of these schools individually issued more than 19 business doctorates for that year. Totals:

Ivy League: 67 total (all schools)
Big 10: 157 total (all schools, including new member Nebraska)
UC System: 36 total (all campuses)

For comparison:

Capella University: 260

So Capella University, by itself, issued as many business doctorates as the entire Ivy League, plus the entire Big 10, plus the entire University of California system.

And University of Phoenix Online Campus was right behind, at 257.

Could the growth of online schools over the past decade possibly be inflating the numbers of business doctorates?

 

This is great information. I was not able to find that break down but I found this-
Doctor's degrees conferred by the 60 institutions conferring the most doctor's degrees: 1999-2000 through 2008-09
Doctor's degrees conferred by the 60 institutions conferring the most doctor's degrees: 1999-2000 through 2008-09

 

The footnotes to that table indicate that it includes the PhD and EdD, but excludes first-professional degrees. So it may not include the DBA.

For more specific numbers, try the College Navigator website. For example, enter "Capella" under "Name of School", and then click the "Show Results" button. This will generate a link to "Capella University". Click on this link, and then on "Programs/Majors".

You will find that in 2009-10, Capella issued a grand total of 841 doctorates. The vast majority (about 90%) were concentrated in a few specific fields: education (381), business (260), and psychology (113). As a rule, online schools issue large numbers of doctorates in a relatively small number of disciplines.

Traditional B&M universities may issue equally large numbers of total doctorates -- but typically in the reverse pattern: the B&M schools issue small numbers of doctorates in a very large number of disciplines. So a typical DBA program at an AACSB-accredited research university graduates no more than 10-20 DBAs per year.

But this means that when schools like Capella or UoP start issuing 250+ DBAs per year, it significantly affects the overall DBA supply.

 

Yes, this is the point I wanted to elucidate when starting this thread in the first place. It's a different kind of animal, created for different purposes. Very few DL degree holders will make it into academia, but who cares? Maybe it's not quite as lofty as a traditional doctorate, but who cares? There are more of them out there now, but it's OK. Some are earned just for personal enrichment, there's nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with a little stratification.

RFValve or CalDog, why don't one of you research some hard numbers on the proliferation of DL doctorates and write an article. I'll bet something like this would be worthy of publishing. If you don't, maybe I will. :smile: