Why a PhD? (Or Any Other Degree)

Hi Michael,

You seem like such I nice guy... I sure hope you are NOT caught in one of these "doctoral programs" that sucks everybody in with false advertising and then does everything possible to prevent them from graduating, whilst demanding more and more tuition dollars.

 

Dave,

As someone who is involved in a doctoral program that is doing everything possible to prevent our students from NOT graduating*. Please tell me what you think those nasty "doctoral programs" are doing, so I can make sure that we do not those things.


*-Don't use no double negatives. Don't never use no triple negatives.

 

Dave: "...people have been scammed by the perpetrators of regionally-accredited doctoral program scams as well..."

From time to time, I remind people about the two excellent books by Wilfred Cude, who was treated abominably by his (large, traditional) university, and was motivated to write about what one reviewer (Trish Irwin) called "a brilliant but disturbing account of the realities of the North American doctorate system. In The Ph.D. Trap he exposes the tragic shortcomings of a system which "traps" bright minds intent upon intellectual progression, soaks up an average of three to five (but often many more) years of their lives, conforms them to an outdated system of conservative study and then dismisses a great number with no degree in hand." Details at wilfredcude.com.

 

Why yes, I am such a nice guy. I'm also smart and quite good looking. And did I mention modest? :smile:

Thanks for the concern about the kind of program you warn about. I'm hoping that Liberty doesn't do that. I'll let you know in about 3 years.

 

LOL Your English skills are getting more gooder.

 

Thanks for asking... The main thing that could be done by these "doctoral programs" is to engage in the ethical practice of informed consent. Tell the prospective student that on average only 1 in 4 of accepted students will graduate from any traditional RA doctoral program and that 1 in 10 (or less) will graduate from an RA online doctoral program. I suppose that legislation will be the only way to force full disclosure.

 

Exactly. He inserts an error into his paraphrase and then corrects it... Curious.

 

Do you have a source on those statistics?

 

Engaging in informed consent is the right thing to do. That is why those institutions whose admissions officers routinely misrepresent the salaries that graduates should expect to make or financial aid officer who counsel students to falsify their FAFSAs deserve whatever sanctions they receive.

With regard to the specific items that you mention, informed consent would require that the information that we give to students not be based on opinion without any supporting data, so the best that we could do is something like the following:

The only long-term (10 year) study on doctoral degree rentention was done by the Council on Graduate Schools. They found that the average retention rate for doctoral programs was 56.6%, which means that nearly 1/2 of all doctoral students never end up receiving their degrees. There was singificant variation according to discipline (and a great deal of variation within each discipline). Overall civil engineering majors had the highest 10 year average graduation rate (77.6%), followed by genetics (69.3%) and microbiology (69.1%). The lowest 10 year average graduation rates were in computer science (41.5%), followed by political science (43.6%) and sociology (44.8%).

I actually delivered this information in our doctoral student orientation, so, hopefully, I passed the informed consent test.

With regard to telling the students that "that 1 in 10 (or less) will graduate from an RA online doctoral program," This statement may or may not be true; however, since I cannot find any research or data to verify the statement (other than your posts on Degreeinfo), it would follow neither the principles of ethics nor informed consent to provide my students with unsubstantiated opinion.

 

I await the schools to publish their own data to either confirm or refute my estimate of 90% of RA Online Doctoral Students don't graduate. I suspect it is higher than 90% but I don't know how high. You previously stated that 75% don't graduate (or 1 in 4) from traditional doctoral programs, and that seemed like a good estimate; hence, I wonder why you are backing away from that number now... Is there some sort of confusion from the first time you read the citation?

Also, I have to share that "10 year graduation rates" is a completely ridiculous term. RA Online Doctoral Programs are advertised to be three or four year programs. No student has ever been told they would be held ten years... Assuming that there is not some sort of confusion again from when you first referenced that source, that would mean that the graduation rate is much lower within the time frame that students are told at the beginning of their programs.

I'm glad you agree that informed consent about RA online "doctoral programs" is good idea. Otherwise, there is this thing called fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud... Again, 90% or more of the students who stay no more than the advertised length of the RA online doctoral programs (four years?) are not graduating, according to my estimate.

Still, the 10% graduation rate is easy to clarify or refute by the RA doctoral schools themselves, who obviously have the numbers!

 

"Fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud" has nothing to do with informed consent! Informed consent deals more with understanding the RISKS associated with a particular procedure or in this case, an undertaking. It is utilized in research to ensure that the subject is "informed" and acknowledges there are certain risks associated with the trial.

I think for the most part, adults seeking doctoral degrees need to do their due diligence in ascertaining their ability to start such an endeavor. Yes, there will be obstacles throughout their doctoral journey. That's part of the process! These obstacles do not mean the institution is fraudulent! It's the process!

Feeling somewhat qualified to comment on the nature of a DL doctoral degree pursuit, I can tell you that it requires time, sacrifice, frustration, communication problems with the school and chair, lack of direction, etc. Are these obstacles that only DL doctoral learners face? My guess is that these are the same obstacles on campus students face as well. In any case, these are adults making decisions to pursue a doctoral degree, If you feel that giving an "informed consent" will somehow reduce the drop out rate, I doubt it!

 

I would love to see some transparency but until there's some solid evidence here there's not much to argue about. It seems that many in the general public deride online doctorates as coming from "diploma mills"... perhaps a 90% attrition rate would be a boon to their credibility.

 

If you go back and read our original conversation on the matter, I did say that the websites that I had consulted were giving a completion figure of 1 in 4. Later, in that same thread, I went back and discovered that my original sources were not based on any empirical data, so I found the one longitudinal study on the subject (that indicated an average completion of just over 50%), and retracted my original 1 and 4 estimate, based on better data. You were an active participant in that thread and responded to my updated posts. Since then, you have brought the subject and I have always responded with the 50% (actually 56.6%) average. Why do you continue to ignore that and bring up an outdated and corrected post?

So that I will no longer be misquoted: The best data that we have is that just over 1 out of every two doctoral students completes the degree.

It is not ridiculous at all. In fact the National Science Foundation has been collecting data of the media years that it takes to receive the doctorate. It ranges from an average low of 6.7 years for engineering doctorates to 12.7 for education doctorates. It is not uncommon at all for working professionals taking one class at a time to take several years to complete a 60 semester hour doctoral program. The math is actually quite simple.

The doctoral coursework for a student taking multiple courses at a time can often be completed within that time, regardless of whether the program is face-to-face or online. There is little that a university doctoral program can do to control the length of time that it takes a student to conduct his or her dissertation research, gather and analyze the data and write it up. Most have time limits (you have to have it done within ___ years), but they tend to be flexible.

How do you know? Have you asked all 49,000 doctoral recipients or the 49,000 non-recipients? Anyhow, no doctoral student is ever “held.” They either fail to complete their courses (just like those who do not finish associate, bachelors or masters programs) or they fail to complete their dissertations.

There has been no confusion. You either forgot or ignored the multiple times that I have quoted the data from the Council of Graduate Schools' study.

Fraud? Conspiracy to commit fraud? Sorry, you aren’t even close. The amount of time that it takes to complete a doctoral program is controlled by the student, more than by the institution. Even if you repeat the 90% figure a million times, it means nothing without any data to back it up.

The schools report their numbers to the government, so I eagerly await your research study validating your hypotheses. You should be able to get the data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

By the way, let’s say that I was one of those doctoral students who was not “chosen” by the school for graduation (sort of like predestination, I suppose). I pay my tuition, complete all my courses, pass my comprehensive exams and conduct and write up my dissertation. Please tell me exactly how my school continues to take my tuition money without allowing me to graduate (since, when they admitted me, they had no intention of awarding me my doctorate). I would be eager to know how this is accomplished.

 

This is the conclusion reached by the Council of Graduate School's "PhD Completion Project" (at the aptly-named www.phdcompletion.org website). While this may, in fact, be the best available data, it should be noted that it reflects only a relatively limited number of schools. Furthermore, the participating schools do not appear to be a random sample of US doctoral institutions; they tend to be top-rated private schools and state flagships, which probably tend to be more selective than average.

So the CGS study results may reflect doctoral candidates that are particularly talented or well qualified. It would not surprise me if overall doctoral completion rates were lower, particularly at DL schools.

 

Note that "total time to degree", as defined by NSF, means: "total elapsed time from completion of the baccalaureate to the doctorate". This could include (and usually does include) time spent out of school working, time spent pursuing a master's degree, etc.

For doctorate recipients in 2003, NSF found that median time from baccalaureate to doctorate was 10.1 years. However, the median "registered" time in grad school (omitting periods of non-enrollment) was only 7.5 years. Since the "registered time" statistic covers grad school in general, it commonly includes the time spent earning a master's degree, as well as the time necessary to earn a doctorate.

 

You are correct. The data that I reported in my previous post (6.7-12.7 median years) were from the table showing time since starting graduate scihool, which I figured would be the more relevant statistic. The numbers since starting the baccalaureate were much higher (from a median low of 7.7 to a high of 17.0).

So those of us who took a while to complete the doctoral degree can be sure that we are not alone

 

At least 90% of RA Online Doctoral Students aren't graduated, ever. Prove me wrong. (Just go collect the data from the schools themselves.) I humbly await it...

I wonder if the owners of the businesses have considered not charging any tuition for their "doctoral program?" If it were "free", then the legal definition of fraud could be evaded, I suppose...

 

It has to be admitted that some DL programs do have very low completion rates. For example, the undergraduate completion rates for the University of Phoenix - Online Campus are readily available online, at the USDoE's "College Navigator" website.

The UoP Online Campus is probably the single largest DL program, with undergraduate enrollment in excess of 300,000. But their completion rates are quite low. For undergraduates who began in 2001-02:

4-year graduation rate: 1%
6-year graduation rate: 4%
8-year graduation rate: 6%

The results for undergraduates who began in 2003-04 appear similar so far, with a 6-year graduation rate of 4%.

Comparable stats for UoP Online Campus graduate students do not appear to be readily available. But it certainly wouldn't be surprising if their graduate completion rates were at or below the 10% level, given that this is the case for their undergraduates.