Wonder does anyone know the procedures for PhD by publication and which universities are more friendly towards this approach? I am teaching with MBA qualifications, a PhD will certainly help a lot.
Do you have publications already? If not, there's little reason to take this approach, even if you could find a university to do it.
University of Sunderland has this option: PhD by Existing Published Works However, you would need enough publications to justify the 3 years of required work. The program is not cheap as it would take at least one year of tuition fees (11 thousand pounds). University of Sunderland is ranked at the bottom of the list in the UK, not much different from Walden or NCU. I would think is a lot easier to take a bunch of online courses with no exams and do a dissertation with no publication requirements that publishing 5 quality articles in good journals and then spend another year putting them together in a logical manner and defend them. If you want a quickie, this is perhaps not the best way to go. Research by publication PhDs are meant for full time professors that already have publications but just need the PhD for promotion purposes. I don't think they are meant to get a quickie doctorate. None of the members in this board has been able to get a PhD by publication so that tells you something.
"University of Sunderland is ranked at the bottom of the list in the UK, not much different from Walden or NCU." Oh, I don't know. This implies that the universities in the U.S. and UK are comparably distributed, that a 20th (or so) percentile school in the UK (like Sunderland) would be comparable to a 20th (or so) percentile school in the U.S. But because precise ranking data are not available, it is difficult to say. It is also difficult to say where NCU or Walden actually rank. My experience tells me, however, that the comparison doesn't hold up. The UK as a few more than 100 universities. The U.S. has more than 4,000 degree-granting schools. I think the range of quality in the U.S. is wider, but I can't prove it. Plus, the characteristics of the universities are different. Sunderland is a well-established, long-standing, residential school (becoming a university in 1992 during sweeping reforms in British higher education). Walden and NCU are short- or non-residential, are not really research universities, are for-profit, and have a narrower target audience (mid-career practitioners). I think regional differences would preponderate here, with a Sunderland degree being more favored in the UK and a degree from NCU or Walden more so in the U.S. Maybe. But there are limits to that. I'd rather have a degree from, say, Leicester (a UK top-20 and worldwide top 200) than a degree from NCU or Walden, even while working in the U.S.
You are right, it is hard to compare a bottom school in the UK with a NCU or Walden degree. Let's put it this way, a PhD from Sunderland is going to be a hard sell for a full time lecturer position in the UK so I would expect that this degree would be also a hard sell in the US. Most schools that do PhD by publication are not top schools in the UK. Another school you might want to check out is Liverpool John moores (not University of Liverpool). I think many of the queries on this site ask where to get the fastest, cheapest, 100% online and easiest PhD that can get me a tenure track position at a University located in a metro area (most are not willing to move). We are still looking for this doctorate after more than 12 years in this forum.
The biggest problem for schools like Sunderland is that they weren't universities until 1992, then they all were. Just like that: boom. There is a real schism between pre- and post-1992 schools. For example, you won't get an examiner from a post-1992 school's faculty to sit on a doctoral viva at a pre-1992 school. It will take a long time for some of these new universities to get past all of that.
The PhD by publication option is also available at Middlesex University: Research degrees Has been around for a little longer but is still not performing that well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middlesex_University
Not looking for the easiest, but cost is definitely a factor. Liverpool John Moores looks good but seems to be focused more on engineering. A bit of travel is ok too.
SU is ranked 1316 in the world. With over 10,000 degree granting institutions in the world, the top 10% is not a bad place to be.
My source is not that credible, in the sense I don't think I can win a scholarly argument with it. I used it as a proxy to get a general idea. No sense provide it here because it will rightly get hammered. There are a sites that try to ranked quality based on scholarly publications and referencing. It is one of those.
If you're referring to Webometrics or something like it, then you're right, it would get hammered and rightly so. Either way, if you won't even name your source then I hope you'll forgive me if I disregard the claim you make that's based on it.
Without DI top 12000 ranking, we are left to making decisions with imperfect information. Maybe you have a perfect source so i welcome the link. I think smart people like yourself knows how to use imperfect information.
There is no perfect ranking for UK Universities, I normally use the ranking below: Top UK University League Tables and Rankings 2014 - Complete University Guide SU is ranked 94 out 115 in the business category, pretty low Liverpool john moores 81 and Heriot Watt 25 The reality is that UK Universities with lax residency requirements, large amount of distance programs and 2 year doctorates are normally at the bottom.
There is no perfect ranking, period. It all depends on what your preferred methodology is, and that would be an individual choice. There ought to be a system that lets people come up with their own rankings, based on the weight that they place on various criteria. But as far as I'm aware, there's no such service.
