what qualifies an institution to offer doctoral programs?

It's pretty difficult to land a tenure track job now. What will happen if that number goes to 10%? What criteria will they use to help cut the applicant pool down to a manageable number?

 

There will probably a de facto two-tier system: research-intensive doctorates and not-so-intensive ones. Both can be useful, depending on the graduate's needs. We are seeing this with thesis and non-thesis master's degrees today.

 

No, I'm not. Actually, you are right. Wasn't the MBA originally intended for engineers etc. that needed to get business education? It seems it's morphed into a degree that even undergrad business degree holders are getting. Degree creep.

I feel my undergrad business degree is good enough for the skills I needed. I'm going to start a masters in history and one in education this summer.

Oh, I don't doubt a DBA is hard work. I was just questioning why the DBA was created. Why wasn't a PhD in those business subjects good enough? As for you choosing to go down the route of a DBA, it's available and makes sense for you and I totally understand why you went with the DBA. I was more curious as to why schools even created the DBA as an option in the first place.

 

This is where the AACSB accreditation comes into place, AACSB will have to be careful and keep "new age" degrees out of the loop if they want to keep academic careers profitable. The other filter can be post doctoral work, it is not unusual for a PhD in Science or Engineering to spend several years as a post doctoral student before landing a tenure track. In business is not the case but it can become common if there is a glut of doctoral holders. PhDs in Computer Science are a dime a dozen nowadays and you see quite a few going for community college or adjunct careers, business doctorates were in demand only because half of the students at most of the Universities are business related majors but if there is a glut of business doctoral graduates you will be seeing more people going for post docs in business or adjunct careers.

 

A good question to ask Harvard since they award a DBA as opposed to a PhD in most of the business fields. Considering Harvard is the oldest school in the US it would seem a likely place to seek an answer.

http://www.hbs.edu/doctoral/programs/

Considering the current state of the economy I have to question as to whether business schools, and in particular Harvard, aren't spending too much time on research and not enough time in actual application in the field.

As to Andy's original question my personal opinion is that the accreditor determines what qualifies an institution to award doctorates. Considering the nature of the accrediting bodies it might be a better question to ask "what qualifies the accreditor to determine doctoral programs as fit."

I also have to agree with Andy on what should constitute a research program awarding PhDs.

While a DBA is a doctorate I have always viewed it as a teaching or applied doctorate meant to address the practical nature of business and business problems. I think that like the EdD the DBA has evolved.

 

Actually, the first doctorates in business were DBAs and not PhDs. Harvard and Indiana used to grant DBAs to business doctorates, Indiana dropped the DBA and Harvard now offers also the PhD in business. The PhD tag is easier to market due to name recognition.

Although DBAs and PhDs in business were at the beginning almost identical. I have noticed a trend in the online schools to offer the DBA as a light version of the PhD. Basically, if you don't like stats and hard core research, you can do a more user friendly DBA that many times eliminates statistics and math core requirements. The same trend can be seen in the UK and Australia, many schools keep the PhD as the program that requires a residential component and offer the DBA in distance education format. This trend has been followed by many schools like Manchester, Aston, Southern Queensland just to mention a few. The result is an obvious devaluation of the "DBA" as many prestigious schools still keep the PhD in a residential format.

 

Thanks for all the info. This whole thread is actually really informative. I learn something here all the time.

 

Capella alone graduates in the order of hundreds every year, a traditional AACSB accredited research oriented school graduates 10 to 20 PhDs every year. This means that Capella probably graduates more PhDs than 10 traditional schools, it is normal to see a lot more people coming from DL schools if this is the trend for all the online schools. To be fair, Capella main source of revenue is not undegraduate tuition fees but PhD tuition fees, Capella is not government funded so they rely mainly on PhD tuition fees to exist.

I don't know the numbers of NCU but I'm sure that they also graduate in the hundred range every year.

The reality is that if an administrator gets 100 applicants and 20 come from DL schools, they will start to wonder about the quality of the programs.

I don't think that Capella, NCU or other DL schools are any lower in terms of quality than other low tier RA residential schools. The issue seems that the perception of low quality might come with the number of graduates. The more number of graduates of a particular school the less the chances they have to get suitable jobs where the doctorate is required.

 

http://www.ncu.edu/about/news/080612b_news.aspx

Looks like NCU graduated 122 doctoral students between May 2007 and May 2008.

 

My alma mater, Nova Southeastern, is in the process of lowering their enrollment in their DBA program to 100 students. That should yield perhaps 20 grads a year or so. This appears to be part of their bid to move upscale.

Regards - Andy

 

Good to know. This reminds me a conversation that I had last year with a recent PhD graduate from a traditional AACSB accredited program here in Canada. He had an interview with a school in Buffalo and he told me that they wouldn't take him because they already have few graduates from the same school. They basically told him that the same year they had few hires from the same school and they need to keep some diversity. If the same logic applies to other schools, I can imagine that it will get just more difficult to get jobs as more graduates of DL schools get faculty positions. If the ratio of graduates from DL schools is 10 times the ratio from traditional schools, it will be just more difficult to get jobs for future for these graduates. The logical thing to do is to keep numbers low to mantain good job prospects but I guess some of these schools just don't see the long term but the cash cow.

 

RFValve,

I have try to find out in the board if you ever has posted your educational background and for what I gather, you seem to avoid answering this and or never(I might be wrong) have indicated them other that you have teaching experience and live in Canada. Perhaps you can be a good sport and indulge me for my benefit, kindly provide this information, I searched and could not find anything, maybe I am getting old! Thanks.

 

Vinipink,

I hope that I did not offend you. I did not want to attack any particular program but only to discuss some observations about online programs. I joined this group in 2001 looking for a PhD in Information Systems and I was about to enroll with NCU before they were accredited. The program only cost 12K at the time but decided to go to Australia mainly because was the other less costly option. NCU was not accredited and did no want to take a risk. I finished the program in 2006 and the program has served me well in terms of more opportunities.

The problem that Andy mentions is real is not meant to offend any enrolled student with NCU or any other online school. The issue raises the validity of online doctorates from schools that were not created with the intention to do research but were initially conceived to provide professional education. In theory, doctoral programs come from universities that conduct research but recently we have seen that many schools see these programs as cash cows.

 

I don't take offense, wow 12K that is what I paid for my NCU doctorate now with RA accreditation, I guess am of the few lucky one, basically you are dogging the question again, so I can conclude that you have some sort of doctorate degree from an Australian University?

Again I don't take any offense, and I don't see Andy's position any different from mine (at least at the doctorate level).

 

Really? I don't think so, especially outside of the few online schools (same ol' same ol' schools) we've heard about and have already had doctoral programs for over five years...

 

Many of the California State University system schools are now offering, or plan to offer, Ed.D. degrees (but not via DL).
http://www.calstate.edu/issues_ideas/2108EddReport.pdf

http://www.calstate.edu/edd/

 

I would also add that the expertise and the availability of a supervisory team is a very important requirement.

 

Doctorates are about research. The research undertaken is very narrow, but deep in the topic area. Because a person has a Doctorate in Business, it does not make them a good business person. It, hopefully, makes the person a good researcher. Very few business people would ever have the time to conduct research as it is conducted in the academic setting.

I believe that a new degree is required to replace the Doctorate for use in non-research positions. It, perhaps, could focus on higher conceptual thinking processes, the interpretation of research, and issues relating to application of principles established from research. The word "Doctorate" should not be used in the conferring of the award.

It should be equally ranked, but heavy distinguished from the pure research degree. Perhaps the person could be awarded a "Fellowship in Business" . something like the the London City & Guilds Award:

"Fellowship (FCGI)
This is the highest award conferred by the Council of the City and Guilds of London Institute, recognising outstanding professional and personal achievement. It is mapped to the National Qualification Framework (NQF) to level 8 (Doctorate degree). Fellows are people who have demonstrated excellence in their field, who have gained the respect of their peers and who can be considered role models for their profession."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_and_Guilds_of_London_Institute

There would appear to be a creditable precedent to adopt. The City & Guilds is a highly respected international organisation that has been arround since 1876. admittedly, it would require a culture shift, but it might be something that a DL College could creditably award that would distinguish its education process from pure academia by the adoption of more professional applied science model. City & Guilds can do it, why can't others? It might make the need for a new process of accreditation for these awards.

 

Actually, in economics, the saying is that "bad money" crowds out "good money." In other words, if the government produces both paper dollars and gold dollars, the people will most likely hoard the gold dollars ("good money") while spending the paper dollars ("bad money"), leaving the "bad money" in circulation.

The analogy does not apply to degrees in the same way, however. I suspect that what will happen is that people will still get their desired degree titles from whatever programs they have the grades and the money to get the degree from and employers will hire people with the desired degree titles based on who they can get with the proffered salary and benefits packages. The more prestigious employers (those offering the best salaries and benefits) will likely get those people with the most prestigious degrees while the less prestigious employers will likely settle for those with less prestigious degrees.