Pace of online doctoral degree offerings...

Oh my - someone with a brain! Thank you.

 

I agree with this as well. While some people might understand that earning a doctoral degree could make them eligible to teach at the university level, this is not their primary goal. I'm guessing that most (DBA, EdD, PsyD, etc.) people earning these degrees are seeking promotional/earning advantages, not university positions.

 

Sorry but don't mean to beat a dead horse but I also think that online doctorate programs attract a lot of working professionals simply because of accessibility. I don't know the personal situation of every student but I don't have the ability to take several years off to pursue higher education. I need to maintain my job. I've pursued a CAGS online which is great.

 

CAGS programs can be a huge plus to a resume.

 

Is it wise to enroll in these doctoral programs that accept everybody and graduate nobody?

 

Where you been, DW? Haven't seen you in a while.

 

Sorry, I've been crazy busy with some projects and taking better care of my health... I'll soon be back to taking names and kicking some fannies...

 

There is some inconsitency here. One one hand we are saying that online schools graduate too many PhDs and on the other you are saying that they graduate nobody. My take is that because they take anyone with a credit credit card, many don't have the commitment to get one and just cannot cut it off.
Online schools know that they cannot graduate everyone that is admitted as this will just low even more their credibilty. Doctoral degrees were supposed to be for an elite of people that could show more than average intelligence (A lot higher than average), if degrees are handed to everyone from the street then they will just become another average credential that any Joe bloe can achieve and become what the MBA and bachelors has become already.

 

Do you think that requiring certain minimum score on a graduate evaluation exam like the GMAT, GRE or MAT is sufficient for screening applicants and insuring that a school is attempting to avoid the practice of accepting anyone with a checkbook?

 

The GMAT is huge filter when it comes to graduate schools. Elite schools require 650+ for admission and this is not so easy to get. I believe it requires an above average intelligence to get a good score, it is not perfect but it is a metric that is globally accepted.
I know few people that have tried the GMAT for years and they were unable to score enough to get into top schools. The problem with averages is that someone has to be below the average for the average to exist but nobody accepts that they are below average so they tend to blame the exam and the system. There is a reason why people prefer to hire graduates from top schools and is because they know that they have been filtered out by the University system.

Obviously there are some exceptional people attending online schools and they decide this path because life circumstances. There is also an obvious interest from online schools to avoid exams such as GMAT, GRE, etc. It just cost too much to market online education and you don't want to turn someone down because the incovenient GMAT, GPA, etc. At the end of the day the studenst are dishing out the money so if they are unable to finish that is their own problem. Obviously online schools are also not so responsible of admitting people that has no chance of graduating due to low academic ability but why stop them when you can make few thousand before they find out that they cannot just do it.
PhDs are respected because people know that holders represent people with outstanding intelligence. When they are handed over like pan cakes they lose credibility and become another paper qualification in the market like Microsoft certifications.

 

What next?

When the market becomes flooded with doctorates, what will be the next step for those wishing to differentiate themselves? Will schools find a way to commercialize postdoc research or will they invent a new post-doctoral degree? What will that look like? If a PhD is a tiny bump on the frontier of human knowledge, will the next step be a broader, integrative degree?

Phillip

 

IMO, there will be no need for a higher degree because the doctorates from the elite universities, Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, Etc., will still be considered a cut above the doctorates earned at lower tiered schools. The doctorates, like mine, that are earned partially online and the doctorates that are fully online will not be regarded quite as highly as the lower tier B&M's. So there will still be various stratum of doctoral degrees and that will differentiate between them. The boundaries between these are blurred by the fact that some of the lower tier schools (maybe elite schools someday) will offer full or partial online degrees.

Right now you have this hierarchy:
1. Elite doctorates
2. B&M doctorates (lines blurred by DL offerings)
3. Highly regarded RA, DL doctorates
4. RA, DL doctorates with low status
5. DL doctorates from non RA schools
6. All doctorates from unaccredited schools

 

They already do this - and sometimes spinning off a for-profit company.

Universities in some counties (mostly Europe) already have higher doctorates. But there degrees have more prestige than they do in the USA so I can't see this practice spreading to the USA anytime soon.

 

What is a higher doctorate?

 

Um, so Columbia University's online PhDs in computer systems engineering, mechanical engineering, and industrial engineering, for example, would end up in #3 above, an indication that they are INFERIOR to 'elite' Columbia University's 'elite' doctoral programs?

 

Some schools in England and Australia have the DSc or Higher doctorate degree that is for people that earned a Doctorate.

There is already a trend of some Universities to offer the PhD for people looking for academic positions in a residential format and the DL doctorates in the form of a DBA, DM, EdD, DEng, etc. This sounds to me like a legal way keep the prestige of the PhD but still open the doors to make the money from other people that want to become doctors too but are not willing to do a residential doctorate. The result of this is the recent trend to prefer PhDs over DBAs, EdDs, etc for academic positions. It is like saying that PhDs are the only real doctors and the other ones just watered down versions of PhD. However, there are online schools that offer the PhD and the professional doctorates in DL format but it seems like the latter ones are just PhDs minus math and statistics.

 

Offered in Places like England and Germany. They require a PhD or a doctorate for admission and they are research based. Some schools only accept these degrees for faculty positions. These higher doctorates are the equivalent of post doc fellowships in the US and Canada.

 

Yea, Columbia is a lame school...Just kidding! I said the distinctions are being blurred by great schools offering online degrees and Columbia is one very good example. However, I would be willing to bet that the same degree earned from the same school in the traditional way would still be favored, at least by academia. Wouldn't you think?

 

Perhaps, or perhaps not. I do know that the University of Nebraska's PhD and EdD in educational leadership programs may be done either the traditional way or online via distance learning. Neither of them is "superior" to each other; in fact the university says it doesn't even make any distinctions between the two, and it refuses to refer to its DL programs as "online programs"...

UNL | CEHS | EDAD | Doctoral Degrees in Educational Administration

"Program Delivery:

The program is not described as either online or on-campus. It is a program that is available to students who wish to come to campus for study, for those who wish to learn in an online environment, and for those who may wish to pursue studies in a combination of on-campus and off-campus experiences."

 

Just try getting a tenure track job with a degree earned online, even if it's from Columbia. Maybe the diploma will not state it, but if they find out it is online, you may find your chances of landing a professorship limited. They might look at your current address or ask where you were living while you earned your doctorate, that's the typical way they would find something like this out. Just because the diploma does not say "online" does not mean they will not know.

I wonder if Columbia would hire any of their online PhD graduates. That would be very telling. If you know that they did in fact hire some of them, then I will happily admit that I am wrong. I would like to be wrong because it's unfair to discriminate against an online degree. It happens though.