Sad but inevitable - DD may be off the air.

I remember Usenet! Except I was part of the September that never ended by the late 90s when I finally got on there. Then my ISP stopped providing access to them.

 

So... after a long gap, I attempted to check in over at the old DegreeDiscussion page, only to discover that it... now redirects to DLtruth. Ouch.

 

I count 12 threads across the entire site active this year. We've had 12 threads active in the last 24 hours. I think we'll be fine

Too bad that DD went down though

 

Never heard of DLtruth before. Looked. My computer is now crying about being forced to look at that site. Yikes.

 

Was it the one with the dancing frog that laughs at everyone´s not American degrees?

 

Lol.

 

Exactly that one

 

If I'm rembering correctly, he managed to take issue with Rich's degree from Union despite his own degree being from the same school.

 

Yes and no.

When Steve graduated (several years before I did, although I enrolled first), graduates received a "PhD in...." So if you studied, say, economics, you got a PhD in Economics. But it was a bit too bold for Union to be awarding all kinds of doctorates while lacking the core faculty in those areas. Each doctoral committee was made up of a chair--the learner. There was a core faculty member who wasn't necessarily a subject-matter expert (SME) in the learner's field. He or she was there to mentor the student through the doctoral process. The committee had a second faculty member, called the "second reader," who didn't participate in the committee, but reviewed the learner's work as a quality control measure. There were two adjunct faculty members--people from outside Union who held terminal degrees and were SMEs. Finally, there were two peers--current learners or graduates--who added support to the learner AND were full voting members of the committee.

A criticism was that Union relied too heavily on those outside SMEs. But in a learner-centered program, the idea was that the learner was the center of the learning, with the adjuncts being an important source as well as mentors. The core faculty (and administration in the Dean's office) were responsible for process. Still....

Union got banged up for that over the years, and eventually changed the PhD name (although the process stayed the same). Instead of a "PhD in....", graduates would receive a PhD in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, with a concentration in something and a specialization in something even more specific. Thus, Steve got a "PhD in...." while I got a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in Higher Education and a specialization in Nontraditional Higher Education.

Is this a distinction without a difference? I always thought so. But Steve could be pedantic on things, so this was one of them. I don't, however, remember him being at all critical of my doctoral work. Anytime he mentioned it, it was positive. But he always liked to give that compliment in a condescending way, as if he was granting you an honor. Really childish stuff.

This is, in my experience, a distinction without a difference. The question is not whether what you are saying is technically correct, but rather whether or not you're deceiving someone. For many years, the Union was actually the Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities (UECU), and it was the degree-granting entity. However, students attending the Union Graduate School (UGS) to actually do their work. Almost everyone I ever came into contact with back then called it UGS and never UECU. Deceptive? Hardly, even though technically incorrect. I tell people all the time that I have a PhD in Higher Ed. Why? Because just look at the explanation necessary to make this useless distinction. (I also say that I have a B.A. in Sociology when, in fact, I have a B.A. in Liberal Arts with a--and here it is again--a concentration in Sociology. My B.S. is in Business, however.)

So, TL/DR? Steve was critical of the change in the PhD title, but I don't recall him being critical of my degree. And when I graduated from Leicester with a Doctor of Social Science--a degree Leicester considers equal to and not "equivalent to" a PhD--he pretty much shut up about the whole thing. I don't know why. He was always very sensitive to criticism about Union--always from people who hadn't done a real doctorate--and liked to hold his "RA PhD" over their heads. I guess he just couldn't do that with me, either for my Union PhD or my Leicester DSocSci.