Release the Hounds!

I'm very interested in the collective opinions/observations/perspectives/findings of the group regarding an interesting little school in South Africa, the Da Vinci Business School at:

https://www.davinci.ac.za/

Particularly interesting were its doctoral programs, including a Doctor of Business Leadership, which is a thesis-only program. The school's degrees are listed by the SAQA and it appears to be for-profit.

Please contribute what you see, think, and feel in this thread. I would truly appreciate reading them!

 

One thing for sure: Fees are VERY reasonable - thank a depreciated currency for that. THREE YEARS of Doctoral study (what the program is said to take to complete) is -- ta-DA $10,400 US. That's for the FULL THREE YEARS. If it's SAQA approved and CHE accredited (and it is - both) then the quality must be there. That's amazing. I wish them every success - and looking at what they offer, I think that's in the cards.

 

I am glad to see this peaked your interest as well. I found the school and degrees very interesting from the other thread. I’m personally more interested in their other doctorate, Doctor of Management in Technology and Innovation. The DM better fits my background as an IT Leader. In the other thread I mentioned that there was a discrepancy in how the students listed their doctorates on their dissertations. Some as the DM and others as a PhD. I went down the rabbit hole a bit and looked up the SAQA ID for the DM and discovered it replaced a similarly named PhD. So, the dissertations are properly labeled. It’s on my short list for sure.

Some of my thoughts. Many of you have a good deal of experience and knowledge with both accreditation and how it works when evaluated between countries. Do you believe this will be seen as RA equivalent, does the change from PhD to DM, or DBL, impact that? It’s not a huge deal to me. I’ve done adjunct work for the past decade but it’s been at the undergrad level. If this allows for opportunities at the graduate level for some institutions and not others it would be ok, but still good to know.

The SAQAs have some details incorrect that should have been noticed by the school or approving body. Some minor things that were obvious cut and paste issues from other degrees. For example under prior learning on the DMs SAQA it mentions RPL is not granted for access to the DBL. Simple editing that has nothing to do with the degree, but it stuck out to me.

There is a 3 year minimum listed. I don’t have a problem with this, but I’m curious if it’s a hard rule. Likewise, there is a six year maximum listed. Fees are only mentioned for years 1-3, so I’m not sure if there are fees if you go into years 4+.

The draft research proposal is required within 12 months and is referred to as the admissions stage, so I’m curious if this is before/after payment and if it counts towards the three years. I had planned on asking them that this week in addition to any other questions I can come up with.

As mentioned the price is very attractive, but I also am attracted to not taking another dozen courses on top of the thesis.

 

Thanks, a great point. Also a good reason for them to have the three year minimum.

 

I'd imagine - if you're enrolled in years 4+ - you pay. Does anyone know a University that works differently? (I don't). If you've withdrawn for the entire year, due to exigent circumstances, then - and only then - you don't pay fees for that year. No?

 

Absolutely, the question is more so the amount. As for one that works differently. VUL charges the same regardless if you complete their courses and transfer in the rest of the credits or complete an externship as part of their program. They’re likely not typical though.

 

The average yearly fee for a Doctoral program at this school seems to be about $3400. I'd guess that'd be around what would be charged in years 4+.

Another ZA school, UNISA, which is known to have had doctoral programs that have taken more than a decade for some to complete, charges the normal yearly fee (last I heard around $2,200) for all subsequent years. My little UNISA joke:

"Hello, I'd like to know the fee for Doctoral studies at UNISA."
"$44,000 US."
"Wow! I thought UNISA cost was more... reasonable."
"We thought it was very reasonable - $2,200 a year, for twenty years."

 

This term is new to me and a bit of Googling didn't help, though I see it's a commonly understood term. Is a "big book" a PhD by publication where you publish 3+ papers on a common theme and then bookend them with an intro and conclusion?

 

In my program at Leicester, you didn't pay anything more unless you extended beyond 7 years. Then it was a nominal feel (somewhere around $US1K). Otherwise, it was a flat-rate fee for the program.

 

Rich was kind enough to give me the definition in another thread.

 

No - I believe that's usually one of the small-book types. Big and Small are defined in this article, which may help.
https://onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca/gradwriters/the-structure-of-your-dissertation/

 

A note regarding word count. The SAQA for the DM and DBL mention 40,000-100,000 words.

 

No.

This is described well in a book called The Professional Doctorate. Essentially, there are two approaches to the doctorate and two other approaches to the doctorate. The first is scholarly vs. professional. The second is big book vs. little book.

Scholarly doctorates advance knowledge in the academic discipline. This is usually done by theory creation or theory testing. Professional doctorates advance practice by researching and testing new ways of doing things in a profession or occupation.

The other way to distinguish doctorates is big book vs. little book. Either approach can be used for either type of doctorate. In the big book approach, the doctorate formally consists of a big thesis. If other developmental activities are required by the advisor, they're based on the researcher's needs and are not formally part of the degree. Passing the thesis is all that matters.

The little book, or "taught" approach, consists of two or more years of coursework, accompanied by a smaller thesis. So, what's the difference between the big book and little book thesis? Size. Scope.

At Leicester, we had a choice to pursue a big book PhD or a little book Doctor of Social Science. (The school had lots and lots of other doctorates in other fields, too.) I asked what the difference was between the two theses and the answer I got back was size. The PhD thesis was limited to 100K words and the DSocSci thesis was limited to 60K words. But because Leicester considered the DSocSci to be a scholarly (not professional) degree, the thesis still had to make a contribution to scholarship--despite its smaller size. This was hard to do.

The small book approach fits professional doctorates well because the non-scholarly nature of the thesis often makes it easier to write-up with fewer words in a smaller scope. Thus, in many countries, a professional doctorate will be taught (small book) while a scholarly doctorate will be a big book thesis.

(This is what tripped me up with WES. They insisted my Leicester degree was a professional doctorate when it most certainly was not. They were foolish. I'm just glad they did me no harm, but I wonder how many others they damage with their ignorance.)

Earning a PhD by prior publication would also be considered a "big book" process since it would not have a taught component. But I doubt the word limits would apply, so it doesn't fit so neatly. That's why "taught" and "thesis-only" are sometimes better ways to distinguish big book from little book.

 

It would be a real challenge to fit a scholarly doctorate into 40,000 words, especially one in areas like business, sociology, and humanities. But if the limit is actually 100K, and the 40K is a way to set expectations--that would be quite reasonable. Also, the DBL is a professional doctorate, making it somewhat easier to keep the word count under the maximum.

(Again, the 40K sounds like a lower limit to give students an idea of the magnitude of a typical project. Word counts are typically maximums.)

 

Yay Beagles! They have the nicest temperament of any dog I've ever known. Two of my grandkids grew up with one. IIRC he lived to be 20! Yes, they're hounds, but I cannot imagine any animal bigger than a gerbil being afraid of one. All they want is to play.

 

I had a beagle when I was a teen. She was all about food. She’d steal bread off the counter… ate an entire box of chocolate bars I was selling for school, stole my KFC right out from under me…..

Now I have a golden retriever. He is also food motivated but he’d never steal it. I’ve trained him to “leave it” until it is presented to him or I say “take it”.

 

Wow! You can pick 'em, Vicki! My other two grandkids grew up with retrievers - Labradors. They were a "thing" in their mother's family, from her childhood on. I was never a dog fan, until the beagle and the retrievers changed all that! Also, retrievers are very nice-looking dogs, in their full range of colours.

"And now, back to our regular programming schedule...."

 

Okay, not helpful. But what a sweet thought!

 

I emailed the school a few questions. They confirmed “ If you move into year 4 - 6, you will not be charged extra. Kindly note that you will have a maximum of 6 year to complete the qualification.”