Isn't a DL doctorate a waste of time?

Ah, the American business model. Isn't it wonderful?

 

Please cite any APA (or other) research demonstrating that home-schooled persons possess any lower social skills than non home schooled students. As one who has undertaken major research reviews on homeschooling, I have not encountered any such body of research. In fact, the opposite has been true. The dozens of studies that I have reviewed thus far indicate that home-schooled students are no less socialized than those educated in public schools and have the advantage of being less peer-dependent and able to interact with a wider age range of persons. If you know of studies contradicting these findings, I would be highly interested in the citations, as I am in the midst of preparing a paper on research into homeschooling for a national conference.

 

Hello Dave,

Universities (for obvious reasons) tend not to publish their doctoral attrition rates, but some experts estimate that approximately 50% of doctoral students overall (non-profit & for-profit) make it to the dissertation stage and approximately half of those end up as ABD. How do you back up your bold assertions that the DL doctorate programs have an attrition rate in the 90s and that they enroll ten times more students than they can advise? Your statement makes it sound like this is a practice exclusive to DL programs. Is this just your opinion, or do you have any actual data. As someone whose institution is planning for a DL doctorate and is working to assure adequate advisement, I am interested in any information that you might have to show that our "competitors" are, in fact, short-changing their students in the ways that you describe.

 

Anthony,

What conference are you attending? Sounds like it might be interesting, as a homeschooling parent and an interim administrator at a community college.

Shawn

 

Hello Shawn,

I am preparing this particular presentation for the InHome Conference, which is a non-sectarian conference for homeschoolers that tends to draw about 1,000 participants. I enjoy this particular conference because it caters to a wide variety of attendees, from "unschoolers" to those with very structured curricula. It is also the most family-friendly conference that I have attended. It is held in St., Charles, Illinois. The website is InHome Conference

 

Dr Pina, you must have one monster vita!

 

Depending on what happens in the next couple of weeks, I'm going to keep that one on the radar...

My wife and 2 oldest daughters just returned from the LDS Eastern Homeducators Conference at Southern Virginia University.

 

Those are estimates based on enrollments in for-profit DL doctoral programs reported here and in other groups over the years. (That's why I put a question mark next to the estimate.) Obviously, it would be unwise for me to name schools, etc. in an open forum such as this.

I did find your estimate interesting though... Half of enrolling doctoral students make it to the dissertation stage. Half of those are graduated successfully. That is, 50 out of 100 make it to the dissertation, and 25 out of the 50 are graduated. If I understand you correctly, your point is that 25 out of 100 of the doctoral students are eventually awarded their degrees; 25% graduation rate is much worse that I anticipated for all schools combined and not that far off from 10% graduation rate for for-profit DL doctoral programs that I estimated.

How could schools be so ineffective at admitting, training, and supporting doctoral students that only 1 in 4 graduate? (or 75 out of 100 don't make it. Or 90 out of 100 don't make it in my estimate.) Seems like there is lack of informed consent and an abundance of ethical impairment (and profit taking).

 

Dave,

Maybe with DL, because the learners have a "day job," they are more comfortable stepping away ... ?

50% seems right, anything less would be pretty shocking. What is the grad rate for BM undergrads? Grad degrees?

I just started my program, so we will see how that goes. I know during my MBA I wanted to quit at least 10 times, but I never did.

 

This is a question (not an argument) for Dr. Wagner and Dr. Pina: Dr. Wagner, you seem to feel that it is not right that there is such a high attrition rate, is that correct? My question is this: Wouldn't it be normal for only a few to make it through a doctoral program considering that it is somewhat of an ultimate achievement? IOW, many attempt but few succeed? I don't see how this is dastardly on the part of the for-profit schools. Are you saying that there should be more stringent screening?

 

Mine's OK for an administrator. I really enjoy the interaction with my peers at conferences, so I have given about 130 conference presentations. I haven't published quite as much--about two dozen, most of which are peer-reviewed. I was very fortunate to have received some excellent scholarship mentoring during the time that I was in the Ed Tech program at Arizona State. Even though I have not been bound by "publish or perish," I find that publishing and presenting has helped to keep my knowledge base and networking healthy (particularly for someone whose field is instructional technology & distance learning).

 

I would be very interest to learn how that went, since I have a good friend at SVU and had considered attending that same conference with my family.

 

I think that's the key, just like everything that is difficult in life, refusing to quit. Even if you get shot down many times.

Steve, are you a SCUBA diver? I love diving. Haven't been in a long time and I miss it.

 

I hope to publish in a few years. Maybe I could hit you up for a tip or two in the future?

 

In my observations of doctoral students and programs over the years, I think that there are a number of reasons for this disturbing phenomenon: 1) Outside of the "hard sciences," most doctoral learners nowadays are older and trying to balance career and family with doctoral studies; 2) Doctoral learners are assumed to be more independent and is less need of advisement and prodding; 3) Doctoral committees tend to be reactive, rather than proactive, when it comes to advising doctoral learners. They will often wait for the student to contact them; 4) Most programs do not allow students to do any substantive work on their dissertations until they have completed coursework and passed the qualifying exams. I cannot tell you how many doctoral candidates I have known who have finished their coursework and then struggle to determine a dissertation topic. I see this as a serious flaw of many doctoral programs.

 

I think that by structuring the doctoral course work to allow the students to work on and refine the first three dissertation chapters and by providing better advising, students would be ready to start collecting data as soon as they completed their qualifying exam. This alone would probably eliminate a great many ABDs.

 

You bet! That is the beauty of this type of forum.

 

Yes, that's a great thing. I know that Walden does this. My school does not, but I plan on doing this on my own, as much as possible. I am already reviewing literature, indexing it in Zotero and will do anything else I can as my understanding grows. This will at least help with the lit review.

 

Someone on this site posted research concerning the time to completion in different disciplines a few years ago. Anyway here is a study done by The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS).
http://www.cgsnet.org/portals/0/pdf/N_pr_PhDC_bookII.pdf
The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) is an organization of 500 institutions of higher education in the United States and Canada engaged in graduate education, research and the preparation of candidates for advanced degrees. CGS member institutions award 94% of the doctoral degrees and 80% of the master’s degrees in the U.S.The organization’s mission is to improve and advance graduate education, which it accomplishes through advocacy in the federal policy arena, research, and the development and dissemination of best practices.

 

Leave it to an accountant to give the actual percentage of his degree progress! Now that is a diligent person! Not to mention your brilliant choice of schools!