Just read an interesting article on Quackwatch. http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/nonrecorg.html There was actually a different Quackwatch artcle discussed on the forum back in June. It was about Gary Null. This one is about "Questionable Organizations". Barrett says, "I view the following with considerable distrust." He then lists Union in a short list of 6 accredited schools. He doesn't say why he distrusts the schools on that Web page but he does link Union back to his Gary Null article. He provides this nugget... "Of course, neither accreditation nor affiliation with an otherwise reputable university provides any guarantee of reliability." I think it would have been more useful had he told us more about what he thinks makes an organization reliable.
Interestingly, the author puts Union on his list, but doesn't state why. He does in the article on Gary Null, however. I found his argument there to be reasoned (and reasonable), whether or not I fully agree with it. All of this is old news, but if it sparks new conversation about Union, it might be interesting where it leads.
The Null news is old news? Probably. It was discussed on here before. I don't recall seeing any comments on the distrust aspect, though.
I know a priest whose religious order is paying for him to finish his PhD at Union. I must say that without being able to verify Null's descriptions, if true they are hardly complimentary to Union's Interdisciplinary Studies doctoral program. Clinical effects of caffeine, measured with only 11 subjects and supervised by a holistic practitioner and a psychotherapist? If accurate, that doesn't strike me as interdisiciplinary, just misguided. I noticed that per their website Union seems to be emphasizing more tailored PhD concentrations in association management and higher education. I think this is for the best and allows for better quality control. I love the fact that there are RA DL doctoral programs, but I suspect they need to be fairly narrow rather than broad to be successful.
Union has been delivering learner-centered, interdisciplinary doctoral degree programs for more than 30 years. I would suggest that taking a sample of one (as above) is insufficient to make such a broad statement. The poster also does not understand Union's implementation of interdisciplinarity. That's okay, Union learners struggle with this, too. Interdisciplinarity can be demonstrated throughout the doctoral program, not just in the dissertation. In fact, it must be specifically addressed in each learner's Program Summary. It is common for learners to take interdisciplinary approaches to their studies, but focus on one discipline when doing their dissertation research. This is from where their specializations spring. Quackwatch wanted to discredit Null. In doing so, they decided to discredit his doctoral program. That's fine; they have their agenda to work. But focus on the facts they uncover, not the conclusions they draw. And be sure your own conclusions about the facts are based in personal expertise, either about the subject or the construct of the degree program. I agree with this poster that Union is moving away from its learner-centered roots and, thus, interdisciplinarity. This is a loss. In the cookie-cutter world that is doctoral learning, Union offers a unique approach for each learner: his/her own. To the extent this is diminished, we will all lose. Eliminate it entirely and you might as well go to Capella.
What is Union doing to move away from the interdisciplinary approach? It still looks the same to me as it did when I looked at them earlier. I just took a look at their doctoral learner's guide and nothing in there has changed on the approach(page 10 of the learner's guide). It was mentioned on the forum a while back, during Union's Ohio Regents review, that they might move to degrees like the EdD or DBA(i cannot hardly see that happening). Is this in effect what will happen? Likley, I don't fully understand Union's approach but it seems to me like many of the schools out there do have interdisciplinary programs. NCU is one I can think of. They mix business administration and computer science, business administration and homeland security, or even business administration and computer security. You get a BA PhD but the concentration is in whatever. Is that interdisciplinary approach different than Union's implementation? Or maybe mixing history with computer science is even more interdisciplinary. NCU's dissertation might not have to be interdisciplinary, though, from what I see. I read one dissertation that looked more like a strict computer science PhD than a business PhD. Your program was HR and Education, right? What does your official record there say your degree is in? HR and Education? I wondered how they worded those on a diploma. I think NCU does it as PhD in business administration with a concentration in X.
All other things being equal, I don't think an entire school (of any nature of accreditation or non-accreditation -- so this is not a discussion of that issue...beentheredonethat no need to revisit it just now) can be judged on a single data point, or even a dozen datapoints. Especially when those datapoints are selected explicitly by the critic for critique. Moreover, analysis of doctoral work is rather complex, even at the best of times. Just what the original contribution is, just what process was involved -- ad nauseam -- is just not as transparent as all that. So, IMO, the condemnation given at that site is akin to my saying Cambridge during Russell's era was a joke because of the Wittgenstein conferral based on Tractatus. I don't think (and it's just my opinion after all) that Tractatus is by any means a doctoral dissertation worthy of an earned doctorate (though it might have merrited an honorary one), from anywhere, let alone Cambridge UK, but I also don't think that makes the Russell era Cambridge any less credible in my mind. Not even one iota. It's something I like to poke at in jest, but there are simply too many circumstances, details, et cetera behind such things. And besides, it was just one such case. Even had Cambridge done that 50 times in the last 50 years, I still wouldn't tend towards such an assessment. Heck -- even if Russell et al. used chicken entrails in the process -- the whole idea I've been pushing is that the institution has its own reasons and standards, and it's ultimately up to the body of scholars to decide what the meaning and value of the work those standards produce. And this is something that can't be done using single cases. Besides -- Tractatus gets its share of laudation -- so who the heck am I to judge any of that -- just another opinion in a sea of them. That said -- that particular case on the QW seems odd. Sure. But perhaps such odditites must be tolerated if there is to be true overall intellectual freedom in interdisciplinary programs. The guy over at QW likes to condemn specific programs, organizations, ad nauseam and compile lists of things to consider bogus. Great. About as much fun to my thinking as collecting belly lint -- but maybe it keeps him out of bigger trouble. Absent some gross negligence -- such as the acceptance of 50 pounds of chum as a dissertation to be kept in the university freezer -- it's just too hard to say what is and is not -- and even that only really lets you know that the 50-pounds-of-chum doctoral dissertation is askew -- not a whole program, unless it happens so often one can open up a bait shop.
I think that I kind of agree with this Quackwatch guy. But paradoxically, I think that what he attacks has been one of the strengths of the Union Institute. His big issue in defining quackery is this: 1. Are its ideas inside the scientific mainstream? Well, the Union Institute was created back in the 60's as an experiment, in order to host non-traditional approaches in higher education. It was a pioneer in DL delivery, it practiced relatively non-traditional admissions, it welcomed unusual dissertation subjects that cut across disciplines, and it welcomed dissertation topics in areas that other schools might not have been comfortable with. That means that Union Institute, almost by design, was likely to run afoul of Quackwatch's 'number 1'. You could go to Union and do a dissertation in parapsychology, for heaven's sake. Psychedelic and alternative spirituality researcher Jean Houston (one of Hillary Clinton's close friends) did her doctorate at the Union Institute. I like that. So yeah, if somebody is trying to treat the Union Institute as if it was a medical school, then I certainly do share Quackwatch's skepticism about it. That's not what this school is. Its doctorates probably shouldn't be taken at face value as if they were physicians' credentials. But that doesn't mean that I don't think that the Union Institute is fascinating and very cool.
My degree program wove business, HR, and higher education, but my degree is a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in Higher Education and a specialization in Nontraditional Higher Education. That's what my transcript says. My diploma says "Doctor of Philosophy." That's it. (But it really looks nice! ) I didn't take any business- or HR-related modules, per se. Rather, I used those disciplines to examine my research problems. That's why it is interdisciplinary. "Interdisciplinary" isn't just taking courses from a couple of disciplines, like business and IT, say. It is actually using different approaches from each to solve research problems. What you've described sounds to me more like a "hybrid" rather than "interdisciplinary." But I'm sure there's plenty of room for disagreement on what has to be a loosely defined concept, at best.
Some of us think Russell went a long way to discredit Cambridge! But Cambridge seems to have survived...
I like Union and I want there to be plenty of successful RA DL doctoral programs, and I don't think I said anything about Union moving away from being "learner-centered." The broad statement I stand by is that with broad concentrations it is harder to maintain quality control. Allowing someone to do a broad physiological study that would be hard to carry off if you were an Ivy League fellow with unlimited lab access strikes me as misguided. "If" this was the case, etc; I am not attempting to draw any conclusions but am precisely concerned about the "apparent" facts. "Interdisciplinary Studies" requires some minimum level of competency and organization in both disciplines, and the research has to be narrowed until this competency and organization is achieved. What I like about Union is that it seems like a good way to do research from perspectives that might be hard to carry off in other programs. "Higher Education as a Religious Ministry" would be hard to study in either a seminary or in a state university EdD program, but perhaps best served in a Union PhD program. I would expect the academic standards of both education and religious studies to be upheld in the interdisciplinary research. If this were not possible, I would hope that Union or any interdisciplinary program would reject the project.
They could put out 100 doctorate holders a year based on what could be written on the back of a small postage stamp and still manage, I think. If it read on the stamp 1+1=2 -- Ph.D. in maths. If 1+1=3, in modal logic. If 1+2=4, in political theory.
