The Sham (accredited PhD)

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Garp, May 30, 2020.

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  1. Garp

    Garp Well-Known Member

    I thought this deserved it's own thread.
    This professor discusses some of the issues he has seen with PhDs. He notes that some of the Sham PhDs may impress your friends and family but a scholar in that field would detect the superficiality right away.

    He notes it happens in regular universities but I wonder if For Profits would be more likely to produce substandard scholarship.

    https://mygraduateschool.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/the-sham-ph-d/amp/
     
    newsongs likes this.
  2. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    Sounds like a topic for a doctoral dissertation.
     
  3. Garp

    Garp Well-Known Member

    Truly!
     
  4. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    Nothing new.
    Elitism always existed in higher education. I heard the same not only on Ph.D. but all levels of degrees.
    Maybe some of the critiques are justified. And some are misunderstood.
    I never studied for Doctoral or Ph.D so I don't have the first-hand experience. But some I always could appreciate
    some classes I took and professors that simply blew my mind. And from anecdotal stories of my friends who graduated from top tier universities and earned post-graduate degrees from popular nontraditional universities, saying that maybe 2 classes out of 12 felt like fair leveled scholarship, the others felt like the bare minimum with substandard professors as long as they paid tuition and submitted their work on time graduation was guaranteed. In some classes they questioned if the professor even read their work, simply grading without reading it.
     
  5. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    When I was in my MBA program, my professor was complaining about how some (generally washed out) students couldn't string together coherent sentences for a graduate level paper. Someone kind of prodded him for more and he let loose on a rant where he mentioned how, at a previous university where he worked with doctoral students, the problem was just as bad there with people working on PhDs needing remedial writing help in the hopes that they could get up to at least college level in time to write and submit their dissertation.

    It would be interesting to study. Though you'd have to have a blind review of those dissertations so the expert's personal biases didn't bleed into it.

    But honestly, we have schools with minuscule departments that probably have no business awarding doctorates doing just that. The school is probably only an indirect variable here. Good schools attract and retain better faculty. Lesser schools do not. At the same time, I'd probably put my money on the University of Phoenix being able to get some actual experts in some areas compared to a public school with poor funding and located in a heavily rural area where the faculty is decades removed from that field (like, say, nursing).

    It would be interesting to see. But I think it would be misleading, no matter the outcome, to reduce it down to for-profit vs. non-profit
     
    Garp likes this.
  6. Garp

    Garp Well-Known Member

    Over the last few decades I think we have gotten away from the heavy academic PhDs (sometimes with additional languages required) to more utilitarian, check the box "PhD's" in a variety of subjects. Not in depth scholarship but the next level/degree title.

    Some fields still require heavy academics. I think Masters Seminary (MacArthur) requires the MTh (6 yr graduate degree) for entry into the ThD and skilled in Biblical Language plus another language such as German. Of course after all of that the academic market is tight so you may owe a lot of money and be able to discuss your field with a few select people while working real estate.
     
  7. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    I'm not so sure you can extrapolate the language requirement change to such a larger conclusion.

    The language requirement existed because it was necessary way back when to be able to read more than one language in order to effectively research most subjects. In the computer age that became far less necessary since (a) one's ability to reach a wide array of information became easier and (b) many seminal works are translated into other languages. It's just not necessary anymore (with the possible exception of English).

    Decades ago, I recall a program (I can't remember which) that still had a foreign language requirement, but allowed it to be met by having a working knowledge of a computer programming language (Fortran, BASIC, etc.). A requirement that had clearly outlived its use.
     
  8. Tireman 44444

    Tireman 44444 Well-Known Member


    At North Carolina Central University, the History Department, when I was there from 1993 to 1996. did have that requirement of foreign language ( you had to translate a paper from Spanish/German/French to English) or computer language. I chose BASIC and took it at Wake Tech Community College and earned a B+, this fulfilling my requirement.
     
  9. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    I understand it, but I'm sad to see language requirements go. Maybe it's just because I like them so much and (wrongly) think everyone else should, too. Back in the day (1960) my local Uni had a policy - every grad in every discipline had to have at least 6 credits in a foreign language. Engineering students usually took scientific Russian or German. If you were studying the Christian religion, Greek and Hebrew were mandatory - in large quantities. Arts students who weren't really into languages usually opted for six units of French, which extended their mandatory high school courses for another year. I know it's not quite the same now, 60 years on, except for the religion students.

    There are two places I have reservations about language requirements being waived:

    (1) Degrees like anthropology, where field work is required. You should be able to talk to the people whose culture you're studying. How else are you going to understand them?
    (2) Degrees in English. English is a complex creature. Half the vocabulary is Latin - and a fair proportion of Greek has been added. Romans occupied the island 2000 years ago, followed a few centuries later by Germanic tribes whose lingua franca evolved into Anglo-Saxon, the earliest form of English. Then the Normans came - Vikings who had adopted French in the century and a half before their conquest. I feel a competent English teacher should know where today's bits and pieces of English came from and have a pretty fair knowledge of all the languages I mentioned, with particular emphasis on Latin, Greek and Anglo-Saxon.

    I was fortunate to have had such teachers, back as far as first-year High School. I can also attest to the benefits of Latin study. Learning Latin grammar gives one a framework to learn the grammar of many other languages. They'll come to you much faster with that framework. And there's also the fact that half of English vocabular is Latin. Knowledge of Latin will improve a person's English - even if he/she is a native speaker.

    I do like the option of computer languages. They are more useful to many people and I feel the learning process is somewhat similar - there's a vocabulary and syntax. They exercise logic and creativity, too, in ways that maybe Latin doesn't. And perhaps when you've had some practice, you end up with a nice paint program or photo-editor. Bonus!

    Language requirements are not a good thing for everyone, but for some I feel they're still indispensable.
     
    Last edited: Jun 4, 2020
    Acolyte, JoshD and SteveFoerster like this.
  10. Acolyte

    Acolyte Active Member

    At Ohio State there was a three unit foreign language requirement for liberal arts undergraduate programs - I'm not sure about specialty tracks like Engineering or even Theater. I took two units of French in high school and decided to pick it back up again for the three units in college - although, at that time it had been nearly 15 years since I had taken a French class! It was actually one of the more difficult things to do and I found it rather distracting, but it also felt very traditional and I feel I got some things out of it, especially in the areas of culture, history, and architecture - which were a part of one of the three units.
     
  11. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    We had a foreign language requirement at Scranton, but it didn't apply for the associates programs. You could not substitute a programming language but you were able to sub in Latin, if you felt so inclined. I did two semesters of Spanish which now sit on my transcript mocking the fact that I have only a smattering of Spanish words embedded in my mind and no ear for the language when spoken. I used to be able to read it with some competency but what with my browser autotranslating things for me, it's a skill I haven't had to rely on in years.
     

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