Why didn't the DA catch on?

It seems that the Doctor of Arts was designed as a doctorate that was meant for individuals to get that wanted to go into teaching at the college level. While the PhD is great for preparing individuals to do research, it doesn't prepare individuals to teach. While the EdD is great for preparing individuals to understand concepts in education, it doesn't prepare individuals to teach. So why is it that the DA has basically gone extinct and colleges still prefer to have their teachers have a PhD or at worst an EdD?

 

When I think of the DA degree the first place I think of is HMU. Off the top of my head I can't even think of any other schools that offer that specific degree. My point is that for the most part, a DA from a NA school is not going to get you an RA teaching gig. That might seem unfair to some people but regardless of fairness it's simply a fact.

 

For a second I thought the DA dropped a catch on a case it was supposed to prosecute... anyway, carry on!

 

That's true today, but not decades ago. Decades ago some top schools were offering DAs and there were thousands awarded annually. My question is more why was it introduced, gained traction, and then went extinct?

 

How has it gone extinct?

I know we talk most about HMU because it is a distance learning program. However, these are the D.A. programs I found...

https://mscs.uic.edu/programs/math-ed/DA/
https://und.edu/programs/history-da/
https://www.bsu.edu/academics/collegesanddepartments/music/degrees-and-programs/doctoral/doctor-of-arts
https://www.unco.edu/programs/music/music-jazz-studies-da/
https://www.cmu.edu/math/grad/phd/index.html
http://www.gmu.edu/schools/chss/dacce/curricula/curr-da.html

So not only does it not appear to be extinct, but it is represented at some pretty solid universities.

 

In my first post I said "basically extinct" which is still true. In my second post I didn't phrase it correctly. However, my question still remains. Why has the DA not caught on? It was developed with a specific purpose, graduated thousands of students a few decades ago, and now it is an endangered species. It is a doctorate that never gets talked about, mainly because there are so few of them.

 

Ok , so let’s flip the question...
Why would I get a DA when I can get a PhD? Maybe I’m being a bit of a snob but I think the PhD is the superior degree and if I was admitted to both programs I would choose the PhD, even if my goal was to teach.

 

The DA was primarily designed to prepare scholars for teaching. Thus, you did studies in your major field, but prepared to teach, not research.

There is a lot of scholarly literature on the DA. I would encourage people interested in this to use Google Scholar to search for articles on it.

My hypothesis for it not catching on is that universities put a priority on research over teaching--heck they use students to teach other students in a lot of cases. The DA simply didn't prepare people for academia. I still think it's a terrific idea for those destined to teach at smaller colleges and community colleges, but even there the PhD seems to win out. There's nothing inherently inferior about the DA, just as there's nothing inherently inferior about professional doctorates. But they don't always do.

There will be situations where the DA will not do. That is not true with the PhD.

Too bad, but I'm not sure getting a DA is worth betting your career over.

 

Why do you think the PhD is a superior degree?

 

While you wait for Kizmet's reply, let me chime in.

The PhD isn't inherently superior. The DA is a doctorate, a valid and legitimate doctorate. The process for earning one has rigor comparable to that found in a PhD. But....

The educative experience requires an exchange of capital. You give two things and get to things. You give your money and your academic effort. You receive an education and a degree. It is that last part where the DA has been troublesome.

A degree is a proxy. It speaks on your behalf where you cannot. People see your degree and form conclusions--good or bad! Well, there are some situations where the PhD is acceptable but the DA is not. The reverse is never true. The question is three-fold:

• First, to what extent is this true? It's objectively true, but we don't know the magnitude.
• Second, to what extent does this apply to any one individual's situation?
• Third, and related, to what extent will this apply to the individual in the future?

The answers to these will tell one whether or not the difference between the DA and the PhD--in terms of its performance in the proxy role--matters.

(Yes, this is the same logic in the NA/RA comparison. It's why both arguments, "RA is better than NA!" and "NA is DoE-recognized, too!" are simplistic....and useless.)

 

It's hard to say how useful something is when there are so few instances of it occurring naturally that we cannot trend it.

If we released 100,000 DAs onto the market we still might not know. The reasons go beyond the fact that PhD is more familiar. Some fields are more competitive than others. The publication history of one candidate might be more impressive than another. The institution awarding one degree might hold more renown in that field than the other candidate. There are a lot of nuances to why a person does or does not get hired.

It's kind of like asking if a company "accepts" a degree from School X. There is no answer to this. While a candidate with a degree from Yale unquestionably has a legitimate degree, they might still not get hired because of poor interview skills, lack of relevant experience, poor organizational fit etc. Meanwhile a candidate with a degree from UPhoenix might find themselves at the top of the list because of a specialized skill or working in a highly in demand field.

It's hard to do apples to apples comparisons on this. You cannot reasonably compare someone with a B.A. in Sociology from Dartmouth versus someone with a BSN from Phoenix. Because I have to tell you, setting aside any family connections or internships that may have been had by that sociology major in, say, a financial sector, that Phoenix grad is probably going to find a job quickly as long as their license is in good standing.

Likewise with the DA. Look at the fields represented. Do we honestly think someone with a D.A. in Mathematics would, by virtue of that degree, be significantly disadvantaged against a PhD? We have no way of knowing that. A mathematician specializing in one area of math may have a very different level of demand than a mathematician specializing in another area. If you're specialized in some highly theoretical math you're going to have a different market demand than if you're a statistician or a logician even if you all, on paper, have the same degree.

 

I don't mind admitting that my thoughts on this subject are full of preconceived notions and prejudices. I also don't mind admitting that I agree with Rich when he says that the DA is a valid doctoral designation and blah and blahblah. buuuuut
1) If, for example, I have a Masters in History and I want to teach History and I want to get a doctoral degree in Teaching History, to be a better Teacher, not to be a better Historian then my first thought is to get a doctoral in Education. Maybe an EdD or maybe a Phd in curriculum or something like that. How/why is a DA better than that? Specifically
2) The DA is a weird designation. DA. It's weird. Most people don't even know what it stands for. A Doctor of Arts? What does that mean? People understand PhD. They don't understand DA. I don't want to spend the rest of my career explaining it.
OK? So that's my personal opinion - not to be confused with reality. I think the PhD is superior because of 1) what you actually learn and 2) the perception of the degree.

 

My first objection to the above is that the DA would actually advance one's knowledge of the field in question, not just the teaching of it. A PhD or EdD would not. Nor would a PhD or EdD make one a better teacher--based on the curricula. That's not what those degrees do. But the DA does. (Or, at least, in it's original conception.)

My second objection is all that explaining stuff. I have an uncommon doctoral degree designation, the DSocSci, but no one has ever asked me, "What is that?" Not ever.

I agree, however, that the perception of the degree among people who know what they're looking at is problematic. The DA is designed for the teaching aspect of university life. But the lifeblood of a university is in research, not teaching. Thus, it fails in many cases.

As a trainer for the past 40 years, and as a practitioner of andragogy, I love the idea of the DA. But it was an experiment that was doomed to failure because it prepared people for the aspect of university life that universities did not emphasize or value as much as research--something the PhD does prepare you for. So the DA died an ignoble death (for the most part). The bifurcation failed.

(BTW, it would have been cool if Union had offered the DA and the DSc instead of the PhD. Those degrees would have been more consistent with Union's avant garde approach to the doctorate, and might have not drawn as much ire from the OBR.)

 

I believe that many people think that the Ph.D. is superior but won't explicitly express this because they don't want to offend anyone. I was never interested in the Ph.D. In fact, the only Ph.D. program I applied to is the one I am in now. Prior to this, I was admitted to 9 professional doctorates (Ed.D., DBA, DPA, and D.CJ). My goal for pursuing a doctorate is 99% personal, therefore, I always thought the Ph.D. wasn't the degree I should be pursuing. As Kizmet said, some of these degrees carry weird designations. I always had to be explaining to people that I wasn't pursuing a Ph.D. when they would inquire about my studies (Ed.D.). So, if there's one reason I'm happy that I finally settled on the Ph.D., it would be its popularity and may I say prestige.

 

So from the replies here it seems there are two reasons the DA didn't catch on.

1. People wanted a PhD only because other people liked it more.

2. Universities like research more than teaching.

The second one makes sense. I'm not well versed in this subject, but I thought that most schools don't value research that much. Of course the larger that schools are research universities, but they're out numbered by many much smaller schools that I thought don't value research as much as teaching.

 

My reaction to this is fairly simple. While it's true that many universities are research institutions, many are not. There are an awful lot of liberal arts colleges out there where the faculty hardly ever publish anything. In these sorts of schools the professors are there to teach. And what sorts of degrees do they have? You know the answer. The vast majority have PhDs. Not DAs. You'd think that these schools would be packed with DAs but they're not. Why? Because it's a weird degree that no one values. Maybe it shouldn't be that way, but that's the way it is.

 

This is the heart of it and no one has really answered it. Except for the fact that schools prefer research over teaching so they higher researchers over teachers. Why is it that schools that don't do research and hire teachers to teach still prefer the PhD? That's the main question I have? It's easy to say the DA didn't catch on because people don't value it. But why? I'm not sure if anyone here actually knows.

 

There might be a clue in the Wikipedia article. It states that the DA is often times the degree people are given when they receive honorary degrees. In our culture we often don't value what is free.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Why-We-Need-to-Remember-the/232923

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Arts

https://www.theclassroom.com/difference-doctor-arts-doctor-philosophy-7855082.html

 

I've done a lot of research on my own on this before posting here. Don't think I'm going to get the answer I'm looking for because I'm starting to think one doesn't really exist. You would think that the people high up in universities who do the hirings would know the difference between an honorary degree and an earned degree. On a side note, I always thought that the Doctor of Humane Letters was the most common honorary degree.

 

I can't argue with any of that.

As noted above, most degree-granting institutions are not research universities. But that doesn't mean research doesn't go on--publish or perish. The DA was designed to give you doctoral-level learning in your field and effective teaching skills. Seems like a good fit for these schools. But....

It wasn't a PhD. And I think after all the finer distinctions we examine, this is the one that made a difference. A big one.