New DETC Discussion

In UK they have awarding bodies that are accredited by regulators of external qualifications in England (Ofqual), Wales (DCELLS) and Northern Ireland (CCEA)..

http://www.accreditedqualifications.org.uk/index.aspx

The vocational qualifications can be on highest level 8 that is equated to Doctorate.

There is a clear distinction between University granted degrees and Vocational, Professional qualifications.

Both require Quality Assurance and regulators of external qualifications in England (Ofqual), Wales (DCELLS) and Northern Ireland (CCEA) provide accreditation of such vocational awards, diplomas etc.

Maybe just maybe DETC can fulfill such a role.
This is not limiting ECuk to award their own qualifications such as CEng etc.
So in US.

The difference that today DETC is institutional accrediting body and they accredit academic degrees.

I hold ILM Management diploma on level 7. Its an award on Masters level academically. - Graduate Certificate equivalent in USA.

 

Except, of course, when it's called a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B) instead. That was the term used for the same degree throughout most of US history.

And it is still the term used in Canada, the UK, and other English-speaking countries. No one doubts that a Canadian LL.B. is equivalent to a US J.D. (in fact, there is even a joint LL.B./J.D. degree program).

 

In my field, rehabilitation, DL schools are equivalent to brick and mortar schools because they are brick and mortar schools and most have the accreditation of the national board (CORE) as well as RA accrediation. Additionally, they are considered equal because graduates pass the certification and licensure boards at the same rate traditional program graduats do. I would not consider DL lesser, just different. For example Virginia Commonwealth offers both a DL MA and DL PhD in our field. Most would accept them as credible.

I think distance education is important. I think in many ways it can be a great equalizer when distance and money are an issue, but only if the programs are quality in nature. It would be nice if DETC could contribute in a positive way to the whole movement of DL.

 

In many places the PsyD has become like the Ed.D.---a repeat of the Ph.D. with a different title. By this I mean they are dissertation driven in the end and not project driven. It was originally argued that the PhD was scientist practitioner model and the PsyD was practioner scientist model. However, to gain credibility and rigor they copied the PhD. This is not true everywhere, but many places. This is why I thought the PsyD in DETC was at least interesting focusing on practice.

 

On the highest academic levels, which doctorates are supposed to be, I'm not sure that professional practice should (or even can) be sharply separated from research. Professional schools don't just teach prospective practitioners a set of canned procedures to be applied by rote, they also advance the state of the professional art. Medical schools and their teaching hospitals are probably the foremost centers of medical research in this country, particularly in its more applied and clinical aspects. Engineering schools are research hotbeds. The better law schools are centers of legal scholarship. This aspect tends to be most prominent in the most prestigious professional schools. These doctoral programs produce graduates capable of creatively applying the intellectual and scientific principles of their craft to finding solutions to unfamiliar challenges, whether it's a novel legal case or an emerging disease.

 

Perhaps not a written dissertation, but the residency requirement would be its equivalent, from a practical skills standpoint.

 

New schools offering doctorates must have done their business analysis. I suspect that they are aimed at industry, not academia, and are the equivalent to the professional doctorate offered in Australia. The Australian Government offers scholarships for PHD's, not professional doctorates which the students have to pay for themselves to some degree at least. There would be no point in offering these degrees if there wasn't any market, but it is a contrived one or one structured on a real need.Professional doctorates here are intended to build analytical skills in the student to interpret and apply research in a specific field, then evaluate its implementation. You will not find these in a university research department, but you may well find them on company boards or in CEO's CV.'s. The question is are they needed?

Universities seem to me that they are expanding their business by convincing people that terminal degrees are necessary. Nobody seems to be questioning why this incessant pursuit of the terminal degree is necessary. Most medical practitioners in this country have a Bachelor of Medicine and a Bachelor of Surgery. They used to be able to obtain this degree immediately after high school, now they need another degree before they can do so (with one exception). Lawyers could practice with a law degree. Now they need a law degree and a postgrad qualificiation. Who evaluates if this creates an improved quality of service? Costs keep going up and universities are expanding. None of this stopped the folly that created the global financial failure.

DETC appears to me to have merely entered a crowded market and is aiming at industry, not academia. It is not intended to compete for university research or teaching places. These are heavily saturated with students from B & M campuses anyway.

 

Is MD the highest degree in Medicine? (Hint: No.) Is JD the highest degree in Law. (Hint: No.)

So in what ways is a JD a doctorate of the university, if it is not the highest degree in the respective discipline and there is no dissertation? The point being that DETC-JDs are useful for practicing law in California but they are not accepted as doctorates for multiple reasons.

 

But is the MD the highest degree in Medicine? I realize that there is some value in a clinical or hospital setting for identifying the most highly trained person in the room, but let's not avoid recognition of the very real limitations of the training in research methods of this degree (and others) to promulgate evidence-based practice and theory (in even Medicine!)...

So since the MD is not the highest degree in Medicine, it seems a perfect future candidate for the rigors of DETC accreditation? (Right?)

 

OK, then what is?

Are these degrees available through the University of California system -- the largest research university system in the world ? I had no trouble finding post-JD programs (usually LLM, but sometimes also JSD) at multiple UC law schools. But post-MD degrees?.

 

Not unless a future DETC medical school gets around the practical skills part of the program. The potential to cause harm is much higher in medicine, even among skilled doctors. Thus, the standard of care is much higher, which is why I don't see the MD degree being offered solely through DL.

 

We've been over this ground many times before, Dave.

Remember the Degreediscussion thread in which you were condemning the idea of MDs teaching PhD students and supervising their dissertations, calling it a degree mill practice, and where I pointed you to UC San Francisco's recent Chancellor, a Nobel laureate with an M.D.? And to his UCSF research partner, another M.D. who after receiving his own Nobel went on to head the National Institutes of Health and is now the President of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York? And to some ten more M.D.s at UCSF who aren't just researchers, but principal investigators who head up their own laboratories and routinely supervise PhD dissertations?

Medical professionals function at the absolute top of their game with MD degrees, they teach, they conduct research, and no higher degree is necessary in order to do any of that. It's true that there are many MD-PhDs out there too, but the PhDs are never in medicine, they are in a cognate subject like molecular genetics or physiology. It's not like the PhD was a higher doctorate in medicine.

A dissertation isn't necessary in order for a degree to be a doctorate. Doctoral degrees appeared in the medieval universities back in the 13'th century, while PhDs awarded on the basis of a dissertation were a 19'th century German innovation. What has historically defined the doctorate is that it's the qualification required for university teaching at the highest level. The word 'doctor' originally meant 'teacher'.

Legal scholars and law school professors typically do these things with JD degrees. They sit on the bench and on the Supreme Court. No higher degree is necessary in order for them to reach the pinnacle of their profession.

They are doctorates. The problem is that the DETC examples are extremely low-end doctorates. And no, that's not because they are JDs and not PhDs. It's because DETC law schools, like the Calbar law schools, don't compare very well with the prestige ABA law schools. The gap is evident in everything from bar-pass rates (Caldog discussed that very well and made cogent suggestions for improving them) to legal scholarship and alumni accomplishments. That's why state bars and professional peers don't give these degrees as much respect as they might actually deserve.

The question of this thread is what positive steps DETC doctoral programs and the accreditor itself can take to raise their degrees' prestige and acceptance. The original question asked about acceptance in the academic world, but the same question applies to licensing boards and to non-academic employers as well, and the answers are probably similar. Lerner made a good suggestion about professional accreditation. If a DETC doctoral program ever managed to become ABA or APA accredited, some doors would probably start to open, at least on the licensing board level.

 

Not to harp on the subject, but 4 of the 9 sitting Supreme Court justices (Scalia, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer) do not have J.D. degrees, according to their official biographies. They have LL.B. (Bachelor of Laws) degrees.

So does this mean that a Concord graduate who flunks the California Bar (a common outcome which arguably does not represent the pinnacle of the profession) is a "doctor" -- while Justice Scalia of the US Supreme Court is not ?

 

No. The term "doctor" has two applications: academic and professional. It can connote attaining the top rank in either. The law profession tends not to term its practitioners "doctor." However, academia does, which is why you'll see lawyers who teach be referred to as "doctor." Justice Scalia, as a sitting judge, would not be called "doctor," whatever the title on his law degree.

Where he to teach in academia, however, he would not normally be called "doctor." I would remedy that in about 5 minutes by getting an honorary doctorate conferred upon him. And I don't even like the guy.

 

They all have terminal degrees that are considered suitable qualifications for university teaching, research and the highest-level employment, such as sitting on the Supreme Court. There's no higher degree expected.

Historically august law professors had Doctor of Laws (LLD) degrees, while street-level legal practitioners made do with bachelors degrees or even with trades training. But as time went by, the LLD degree kind of degenerated into a meaningless honorary degree bestowed on political bigshots, while the LLB degree inflated to fill its old role and became the terminal teaching-qualifying degree. It wasn't like people with LLBs had to earn another higher degree before they could teach in law school or be appointed to the bench.

That's what justified rebranding the LLB as the JD, which all American law schools did decades ago. Many law schools offered to replace earlier alums' LLB diplomas with JD diplomas. I guess that some traditionalists like Scalia kind of took reverse pleasure in their LLB (like British surgeons pointedly calling each other "mister") and didn't take up the diploma-switch offers. I'm told that Harvard's famous legal scholar Laurence Tribe is perversely proud of his LLB among all the pompous Harvard doctors. (He already had a UCLA BA before he entered Harvard Law School.) Reverse-snobbery, I guess.

Returning to your example of a Concord graduate who fails the bar, that's not unlike somebody who graduates from a low-end PhD program in the sciences, but who doesn't find a job and does no productive scientific work. It's sad, but it doesn't imply that a PhD wasn't a high enough degree for practicing science. It does suggest that perhaps the individual should have chosen a stronger program.

 

The implication, then, would seem to be that a "doctor" is someone who holds a terminal degree. That would be one way to look at it.

In this case, the LL.B. degrees historically issued in the US, and still used in Canada, the UK, etc. could be regarded as doctoral degrees, even though they do not have the word "doctor" anywhere in their names.

But then there could be other types of "non-doctoral" doctoral degrees as well. For example, universities commonly employ and tenure art professors with M.F.A degrees, or architecture professors with M.Arch. degrees. Again, aren't these terminal degrees that are considered suitable qualifications for university teaching, research, and the highest-level employment in their respective fields?

 

My point was that a JD is a Doctorate, however insufficient given your criteria of a dissertation and the same can be said for the MD.

I'm fully aware of the JSD or SJD and MSTP programs. Like I said, I agree with you in terms of rigor. I just don't dig the connotation that someone who has a real degree called "Doctorate" and having done real work to accomplish that degree being advised that they don't have a real Doctorate cause they didn't do a dissertation. That's obviously false.

Now if you stated that they didn't have the highest level doctorate possible instead of the "real" paradigm I'd be in agreement, simple really.

Thanks,
ITJD

 

The whole JD-as-doctorate-LLB-as-old-JD thing is a bit of a mess, but I'm not sure it's worth arguing over. Holders of the LLB are treated like holders of the JD. Holders of the JD in academia are treated like those with academic doctorates. Etc., etc., etc.

How does this relate to DETC again?

 

Regardless of the Concord graduate flunking the bar or not, he or she would still hold a valid juris doctorate degree. As such, they are a doctor. Unless Justice Scalia converted his LL.B to a JD (by way of the law school that originally issued it), then, he does not hold a juris doctorate degree. As such, he is not a doctor.

 

MS and PhD in Medicine