In my last entry, I discussed the issue of whether candidates can or should ask institutions why they weren’t hired.
One of the commenters mentions several reasons that a candidate would be rejected that, even if shared, wouldn’t help the candidate prepare for future searches. The most striking of those is, “Technically you have an appropriate graduate credential and your presentation was OK, but the school you attended just isn’t acceptable to our administration.’”
A later commenter points out that “the candidate would have no way of knowing this unless the committee revealed it, and being told that would be an eye-opening reality check [...] .”
This exchange raises some interesting and challenging issues in a discussion of hiring. The most important of which is that if an administration finds a particular candidate’s graduate institution to be “unacceptable,” that candidate should not have been granted an interview in the first place. It would be fundamentally dishonest to interview someone you know has no chance of being successful.
But that point begs the larger one of “unacceptable” institutions. I am very much of two minds about defining specific graduate institutions as unacceptable. On one hand, as I’ve said here many times before, prestige is the currency of the profession, so naturally, hiring institutions want representatives of prestigious graduate programs on their faculties. There are, at least in some instances, arguable qualitative reasons for valuing certain programs more highly than others, but these vary tremendously by discipline and for all sorts of other reasons.
I come at this question as someone who has worked at several institutions, only one of which has a solid claim on its own prestige. Even there, the college’s location, small size, and limited financial resources limited its attractiveness to many candidates. But given that, on the whole and at four different institutions now, we have almost always been able to hire wonderful, strong, smart, talented people, even in the more challenging disciplines.
One of the ways we’ve been able to do this is by not insisting that our chosen candidates hold the most prestigious doctorates or whatever other appropriate qualification we were seeking. There are a number of outstanding supervising faculty members in practically every doctoral university, and talented students, too. Many terrific candidates don’t have an Ivy Ph.D., or one from a place like Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina, or the UC system. But if a candidate from outside that circle has the most to offer a particular institution, that person is the one who should be hired.
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45 Responses to An ‘Unacceptable’ Degree?
pattyann64 - June 13, 2010 at 12:48 pm
This was informative. I never dreamed that an insitiution of higher learning, no matter what the address, would be of such a mind. I have always known that many students from various hallowed halls of education think that the are above all other college or university students, but it is a revelation to know that the faculty, staff, or admininistrators hold such a view.Patricia A. Wilson, ME.d
iris411 - June 14, 2010 at 8:08 am
shouldn’t that be counted as discrimination? what equal opportunity? your chances are determined 6-10 years ago when you first entered the ph. D program.
d_and_der - June 14, 2010 at 8:41 am
If you did not understand that your future employment would be determined by the doctoral institution you selected, you probably weren’t that bright to begin with. No, it is not discrimination as defined by Title VII.The author is correct, however, that an Ivey League Ph.D. may not be the best choice for your institution, especially if that institution is a teaching school. In my humble opinion, the art of dialogue is often lost on researchers.
washingtonwarrior - June 14, 2010 at 9:31 am
Valid argument. Who would be crazy enough to hire a Ph.D. from Kaplan, Phoenix, or Capella?
professor_e - June 14, 2010 at 10:38 am
This should also be related to the issue of “degree in one’s teaching field.” There are far too many folks teaching various subjects, but who have an Ed.D. The Ed.D. is usually less rigorous than a Ph.D. and is only approriate for those in departments of education, not history, biology, math, or English, etc. These folks cannot expect to achieve tenure or promotion. They should have had proper advisement early on, but I suspect that they simply chose what they thought might be the “line of least resistance,” in terms of research requirements. We are all responsible for the choices we make in our lives and cannot blame our situations on poor advisement.
laker - June 14, 2010 at 11:06 am
I work in a Community College after a long career at a well-known, emergent comprehensive university. The “prestige” argument doesn’t hold water here, and it is one of the reasons I am so happy to have arrived here, even late in my career. People are hired because of their ability to teach, and their passion for and about student learning. I served on a search where many “prestige” candidates were not considered because their own statements indicated their interest in continuing their “research in James Joyce” and a lukewarm treatment of teaching.The snobbery around Ed.D./Ph.D. also rubs me the wrong way as it does not take into account the aspirations of the candidate. If indeed the candidate has inappropriately prepared him/herself for a research-university position, the argument has weight. If they completed a credential to provide themselves with greater opportunities academically or administratively, they may have been spot on in their decision.We may think it is crazy to consider a Phoenix, Capella, or Kaplan Ph.D., but someday one of those institutions will break through and the rules will be forever changed.
cleverclogs - June 14, 2010 at 11:53 am
@ #3 re: “If you did not understand that your future employment would be determined by the doctoral institution you selected, you probably weren’t that bright to begin with.”A person’s brightness cannot be judged on whether or not they knew the secret rules of the industry (in this case, some degrees are unacceptable), rules so secret (and frankly shameful) that most hiring committees will refuse to admit to them. Maybe that person stupidly believed that the people who ran universities walked their talk and were legitimately interested in multiple perspectives, diversity, life experience, etc. And maybe that’s naive, but it’s got nothing to do with one’s intelligence, just one’s level of cynicism.Universities should really just admit that they hold these prejudieces – unless they are really ashamed of them, in which case they should work to correct them, not pretend they’re not there.
22286593 - June 14, 2010 at 12:42 pm
This is an odd article. On the one hand, there is a clear and obvious delineation of acceptable, less acceptable, and not acceptable Ph.D. granting institutions. To state that there is a pecking order in American higher education is absolutely obvious. However, the author draws the circle of acceptability way too narrowly. Ivy’s and Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina, and the UC system? What sort of list is this? Even at the very top tier, the list of institutions would be well over 50 in any discipline. Here is the U.S., we are indeed blessed with so many highest quality doctoral programs that graduate stellar students. In English, the difference in the quality of training between Yale, Berkeley, Texas, and Washington are minor. In chemistry, who would be able to distinguish graduates from Stanford and MIT with Arizona and Georgia Tech. Ultimately, if one wants to make a career in higher education, one should exercise some common sense and enter a program with good reputation–thankfully, I think it is a truly a rare person who applies for an academic job who is genuinely surprised that the quality or the reputation of their Ph.D. is lower than what they expected going in.
tgroleau - June 14, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Since my comment is the basis for this article, I guess I’ll provide a little more detail.My comment was based on searches in high demand fields where many candidates have on-line/hybrid doctorates from schools like those listed by #4. The schools I’ve been with will turn up their noses a bit at some “lesser” brick & mortar schools, but it’s not been a dis-qualifier (I’ve even heard rumors that my PhD from a major southeast public university was considered merely “OK” when I was was hired).That said, I agree completely that someone with an unacceptable credential should not be granted an interview in the first place. However, in the searches I referred to there were multiple administrators involved at different levels of the decision and it wasn’t always clear what was and wasn’t acceptable. These are the cases where I wouldn’t tell a candidate “sorry, you went to the wrong school”.Now I’ve been around long enough that I know what the boundaries are and use those boundaries in initial screening. I’ll still get “why wasn’t I interviewed” questions from both candidates and their acquaintances on our faculty. In this situation I do my best to be both gentle and honest but I find that my honesty is NOT usually appreciated.
tuxthepenguin - June 14, 2010 at 3:05 pm
One reason why this can be problematic is that the quality of PhD programs varies a lot by discipline. One administrator in my first job talked down to me because I got my degree at a university that was considered weak in his field. He then made a comment about how his graduate institution was considerably better. Yet in my field, his instituation was rock-bottom in the rankings, barely even worthy of having a PhD program.Slightly off topic, it’s funny the different reactions you get when you tell grad school faculty members where you will be working. If the school is strong in their field, they will be excited. If the school is weak in their field, they will give a weak response. My university is “uneven” in the sense that some departments have good quality PhD programs, while others have only undergrad programs with a small number of majors, and the faculty do little research.
david_r_evans - June 14, 2010 at 5:00 pm
#8, you missed the phrase “a place like” in my list. I’m in English–I’ve hired people with doctorates from Old Miss, New Mexico State, TCU, Ohio University, Iowa, UGA, Houston, and quite a few other places (including UNC and a couple of the others on the list; my own Ph.D. is from Virginia). These are all strong institutions awarding Ph.D.s to excellent young scholar teachers. But they are not “places like” the UCs, Virginia, UNC, Michigan, and the Ivies.
yasulh - June 14, 2010 at 8:57 pm
I am a Capella graduate, and proud of it. I completed my doctorate there in general psychology after previously completing a bachelor of science and master of science at Georgia State University – a traditional research institution. I can tell you that while I valued my time at Georgia State, I learned more and grew more as a scholar during my time at Capella. I was taught by faculty whose research I had been following for years. I was blessed to have a faculty member on my dissertation committee who is well known in the area I was researching, and an editor of a peer reviewed journal in that area. I chose Capella based on the experience of peers who were students there, as well as the fact that they had the first online counseling graduate program to receive CACREP accreditation (which a traditional school that I sat on a committee for as a professional community member was trying to get). While I was pursuing my degree in psychology, the fact that Capella had programs that were CACREP accredited said a lot to me (a licensed professional counselor) about their committment to quality education. I was fully aware that I would have an uphill battle in academe coming from a non-traditional program, but I was up for the challenge. I am very happy with my experience and the doors it has opened for me.
11161452 - June 14, 2010 at 9:41 pm
From the author,”It would be fundamentally dishonest to interview someone you know has no chance of being successful.”Agreed. However, this happens every day in sham searches, where the school is required to do a “national search” but the committee knows in advance exactly who will get the job. But that’s another column…
raymond_j_ritchie - June 15, 2010 at 3:53 am
As someone with an Australian PhD this all sounds insufferably provincial and makes noises some universities make about internationalization a bit of a joke. I tell students that their PhD is not worth much more than the paper it is printed on unless they have a publication record in international journals and their PhD supervisor also has a good publication record. Single-authored papers or papers with just their PhD supervisor are good indications of real ability.I never show any interest in the university where someone got their PhD, I want to know who their supervisor was. The university they come from tells you very little.As a post-doc in the North America I was able to hold my own at Cornell, UBC Vancouver and Washington State University. I met PhD students varying from the brilliant to the very ordinary. If anyone tried to be patronizing with me I told them how many papers I published out of my PhD. Generally that made them pull their heads in.
tuxthepenguin - June 15, 2010 at 9:27 am
@raymond_j_ritchieI’m not sure I follow your argument. There are some very good universities in Australia. Certainly a PhD from ANU would put someone in a completely different category from someone with a Phoenix PhD.
ihadanidea - June 15, 2010 at 12:13 pm
To those who question (rather vehemently, it seems) the value of an online PhD, what is your reasoning? What is it about these institutions that automatically disqualifies a person holding one of their degrees from a faculty position?
anthonymartin - June 15, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Elitist educational establishments only foster a culture of hate and resentment. As much as it is human nature to segregate people by class & wealth, it’s not conducive to a betterment of society as a whole. Selecting candidates via a secret criteria is indicative of a ‘Gentlemen’s Club/Den Of Inequity’. History shows but, is ignored by colluding rich ‘Boys’ club that, there are many people who’s talents far exceed many a scholar. From Einstein & Brunel to Hawkins & Al-Khalili, there are many geniuses out there who did not adhere/conform to the expected educational pathway of their peers. Today is no different. Now we have the internet to educate people. They may not acquire a degree/qualification but, they are free to learn at their own pace and fulfil their own agendas. From these establishment will blossom a new era of home learned geniuses. Many people using the KhanAcademy on Youtube ( http://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy )may well manifest in tomorrows outsider nobel winners!
peoplegogy - June 15, 2010 at 12:28 pm
First, I am a proud graduate and current learner at Capella University. After having such a personal and academic rewarding experience, I returned to pursue an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership and Management. Secondly, the Ed.D. is not inferior to the Ph.D.While the Ph.D. focuses on expanding or creating new knowledge in a partficular field. The Ed.D. focuses on applying research to the professional practice within a particular field. There is nothing inferior about that.I chose the Ed.D. because I want to lead an educational nonprofit organization. In preparation to do so, I needed a degree in which I would learn the practice side to organizational development, change management, and leadership. I did not want to deal with the hypothetical. What I need, which I am learning at Capella, is how to solve real organizational problems in real time.
mhick255 - June 15, 2010 at 1:04 pm
If you judge someone based on where they got their PhD, doesn’t that assume that they were fully initiated into the hidden world of academia before they even began their PhD program? Many undergraduates – especially those at “lesser” schools – think that any PhD is just as good as any other. Shouldn’t applicants be judged on what they have done during and after their PhD program? Otherwise, you’re essentially hiring someone based on how canny they were when they were 23 (or whatever age they applied to PhD programs).
ihadanidea - June 15, 2010 at 4:27 pm
Anyone else amused by the irony that U Phoenix has two big ads on this page?
tgroleau - June 15, 2010 at 4:38 pm
In response to #16)I’m not personally the one who has rejected on-line PhDs, I’m merely “middle management” and it’s my job to enact policy that comes from above me. I’ve tried to report here as much detail and honesty as I can without giving away more than I should in a public forum. (maybe I should have created a more obscure userid for my account(However, one potentially valid reason to reject on-line PhDs in my field is that none of them have achieved appropriate subject area accreditation. They have regional accreditation as required for qualify for federal financial aid but not subject accreditation. It looks like at least a couple of them are on track for that accreditation, but they don’t have it yet. It could be a major game changer when it happens.
drrussporter - June 16, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Weighing in on the Ph.D. v. Ed.D.: The comparison is invalid when weighing the mission of the two degrees. The Ph.D. is research based, and the Ed.D. is practitioner based with research to help improve that focus. But the blending of the curricula in both has made some Ed.D. holders even better researchers than the Ph.D. holders. Therefore it is imperative to assess the outcomes of the holders and determine if the research conducted is what that discipline needs. One Ed.D. holder may have more research outcomes in that discipline specific to the needs of the department, while a Ph.D. may not. I speak from experience since I have both degrees.
davi2665 - June 16, 2010 at 5:05 pm
Elitist institutions sometimes look for the candidate with a Ph.D. from a prestigious university and program because they are trying to optimize their chance for pulling in grant money. And NIH review panels consist almost exclusively of faculty from the high-prestige universities, who then scrutinize the key personnel for their ties with elitist universities and programs. If you come from lesser podunk u, good luck ever getting anything other than a rejection letter. It is objectively unfair, but a reality of the NIH game; I imagine the same goes on in other funding agencies and non-medical/science disciplines.
amnirov - June 16, 2010 at 8:38 pm
Ha ha ha #3′s trollery would have a whole lot more successful if the moron hadn’t spelled “Ivy” incorrectly.
alleyoxenfree - June 16, 2010 at 9:41 pm
It’s true that this can be a problem in many searches without the search committees even knowing about it. Many “name” institutions have weak or nonexistent programs in subfields, yet a hiring committee without the specialty (and this may be exactly why they’re hiring) won’t know that. Perhaps job candidates need to include rankings with their application materials, or provide their dissertation chair’s publication record. It may be unrealistic to think that search committees know the achievements of those whose specialties they know tangentially at best.
frenchgirl - June 17, 2010 at 2:40 am
If the prestige of one’s PhD granting insitution was really a marginal thing, why on earth are so many candidates two or three years post-PhD (with excellent publication records and solid teaching experience) beat out for tenure-track assistant professor positions by ABDs from Yale and Harvard, etal.? Take a look at the 2008-2010 English and AHA online job wikis, for example. Many job listings have a note about the “lucky one” who was offered the position at the end of the process. Quite frequently the winners are Ivy ABDs. Proof is in the pudding, not the rhetoric.
jffoster - June 17, 2010 at 7:53 am
Actually, Anmirove (24), as long as we’re focusing on trivialities, at one time “Ivy” wsas commonly spelled *Ivey*. In some early versions of Middlebury College’s Alma Mater, for instancy, the opening line shows up as “Walls of Ivey,…”. May (3) is an aging Panther. As a more general comment on the post original, I have just recently advised an incipient senior in Linguistics in a major Big 10 + 2 University who is looking to graduate school to the following effect: If you can’t go to one of the top, say top two dozen, graduate departments in what you want to study and very strong (say top 30 or 40) in the field generally, and moreover can’t get your way largely paid through grants, GAships, or fellowships, then don’t go and think seriously about doing something else.
bdbailey - June 17, 2010 at 7:57 am
I don’t disagree regarding PhDs from Phoenix, Capella, or Kaplan, but have enountered a number of Nova PhDs at least in community college circles, including one president.
bdbailey - June 17, 2010 at 8:05 am
mhick255,Similarly, many (most?) high school students believe that any Bachelor degree is as good as any other. This “hidden world of academia” is a mystery to most people whose parents are not college graduates.
jffoster - June 17, 2010 at 9:02 am
29 (bdbailey), I don’t know about “most” high school students, but my parents never went to college — my father never finished high school. But back in the late 50s and early 60s most high school students I knew knew that some colleges were better than others, and that colleges could be better in some things than others.
amnirov - June 17, 2010 at 9:42 am
I will agree with jffoster that no one should do a PhD unless every single expense is paid by fellowships, grants, scholarships, bursaries, and other awards. As for TAships… everyone should have one at least once in his or her education, but I think it’s not wise to rely on one for funding the degree itself. A TAship is something that should be done merely for experience.I had one as an MA student, but turned down all teaching as a doctoral student. A candidate needs to have taught a few courses, and any additional experience beyond that is more or less worthless.
mcdonaldj - June 17, 2010 at 11:26 am
Though a number of posts have hinted at it, academia is highly class stratified. I’ve always taken it as rule of thumb that, based on the PhD granting institution, one moves laterally or downward in the hierarchy. There are always exceptions to the rule, of course.
abaigeal - June 17, 2010 at 11:28 am
Sure, but the truth is that MOST institutions, financially, geographically, or otherwise limited, do not care at all about the quality of their candidates. Institutions care about talking points for trustees, the newsletters for parents, and statistics for institution-ranking books and websites. The person who claims that kids are stupid if they didn’t think about grad. school ranking before going into their profession is, of course, entirely correct. People who dreamed of being a professor since childhood (like me), and who do go to “notable” university (like me) get the rude awakening that the job isn’t to educate, but to look good on an institution’s website.I can do much better than that. I’m working on ways to help our nation do better than this. Don’t settle for the status quo if you can do better. Get that ivy league or other top-tier degree, or course, but then why not do something that will actually make a difference?
wingedwarrior - June 17, 2010 at 11:29 am
Regardless of where you earn a degree, at some point in time, you’re going to have to demonstrate you can do something.
robertkase51 - June 17, 2010 at 12:55 pm
It is a very sad thing that a professional post becomes so cynical as to start referring to other colleagues as a “moron.” #24 should check his own grammar before referring to an author as a “moron.” I can only imagine the tenor of your faculty meetings.
profperf - June 17, 2010 at 1:57 pm
@31. I think this advice should be contingent on the discipline and the kind of institution at which a graduate aspires to be a faculty member. I am on the faculty of a teaching-centered primarily undergraduate comprehensive college. Demonstrated experience of excellence (or potential for excellence) as a teacher matters far more to us than the number of research articles a candidate has published in graduate school (we tend to hire at the junior level). I’d rather see an application from someone who has taught a course or two every year or semester throughout their graduate career and has presented a couple of papers at conferences, than someone who appears to have taught an obligatory year (to “get experience”) and has research CV two pages long. Four our purposes, we need faculty really ready for the classroom (with the understanding that there is still a learning curve at each new school–that people get better as they gain teaching experience) and that they will have the five years of probationary appointment to start building their publication/conference profile. The opposite may be true at an R1–more’s the pity, I think, as it often leads to very indifferent and sometimes incompetent teaching. Even R1s need good teachers.
profperf - June 17, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Should have been “for,” not “four.” Wouldn’t want anyone to call me a moron (or imbecile or idiot, for that matter).
nacrandell - June 17, 2010 at 2:11 pm
#26 “…Quite frequently the winners are Ivy ABDs. Proof is in the pudding, not the rhetoric…”Academia mirrors the business world, despite a self-perceived aloofness. University degrees are boxes in an HR department candidate review sheet. In Ivy and Ivy-lite schools, Bucknell, Colgate or Williams, businesses recruit manager trainees. And in land grant schools, the same businesses recruit for entry level positions. Why?To suggest that the success of Ivy school graduates is proof ignores the marketable perceived quality of each school’s education value by the HR departments and the networking systems of each school.An Ivy league education is a box to be checked or left unchecked by a computer reviewing the CVs.
bethpage - June 17, 2010 at 4:54 pm
The argument is all about ego/elitism in my experience and the I am better then you because I went to a better school and you didn’t argument. In business departments, faculty love to convey they do not hire potential faculty with regionally accredited degrees, as they don’t have specific subject accreditation such as AACSB, the gold standard accreditation in business.What they conveniently like to ignore repeatedly, is to be ACADEMICALLY QUALIFIED ACCORDING TO AACSB the faculty member must publish in two peer-reviewed journals every five years. Therefore, if you hired someone from Wharton and he or she did not publish for five years after earning their degree they are no longer academically qualified and will not be allowed to teach in an AACSB program. You can hire someone from a regionally accredited school and if they have two publications in the last five years, they are ACADEMICALLY QUALIFIED according to AACSB. As long as they keep up the publication efforts, they will be academically qualified.This means, that someone could have went to a regionally accredited doctorate program and if he/she publishes in two academic journals in their field, they are academically qualified and could teach at any AACSB school with the AACSBs blessing. Most academics will thumb their nose at this notion, although it is 100% true. I myself went to a regionally accredited (not a 100% online university) but still ran into a wall in many instances whereby faculty would say, “I wish you had gone to another school and we could hire you.” Yet, I just got an acceptance based on minor changes in a 12% acceptance rate journal that is one of the top three in the field. Yet, most academics will ignore this and say, “You didn’t go to an AACSB accredited school, have a good life.” To me, if someone can publish in high-level venues, I would hire them as long as they went to at least a regionally accredited program. Who wouldn’t want a national scholar on their faculty whether they went to a Ivy league school or not?The reason it is hard for someone who went to a regionally accredited university is that elitism is so huge in academia. Just the other day I was speaking with a colleague at a third tier university (AACSB accredited) who told me that her university would never hire me due to the non-AACSB degree issue. When I conveyed that having two peer reviewed publications makes me academically qualified. She simply replied, “Well, that is true but the committee would never interview you.” Where you get your degree should matter for your first job, after that it should be based on your publication, teaching and service record. If business ran 100% like academia, all the Fortune 500 CEO’s and officers would have went to the top schools. Yet, that isn’t the case is it? I am not saying that my training/education was at the level of someone going to Harvard. Yet, I believe that I could be an asset to a tier two school or below. Yet, it has been a hard road, and I think it is going to take many baby boomers that are still in the system with biases that are not going away anytime soon to retire. A candidates job history, publication record and education training should be weighed, but not 100% based on where the person got their degree. If someone can publish in decent journal in his/her field they are capable as a researcher.At my last university, I sat with my stomach turning as a room full of PHDs and others, went through vitas of potential dean candidates for my college. I had a list of one’s that I thought met the criteria for the position. To my surprise, the rest of my colleagues took out each vita and simply looked where they went to school at. I objected but was quickly overridden. It really went something like this, he went to this school, have you heard of it? No, I have not okay not him…Oh this one went to…put him in the pile to be interviewed. They didn’t even look at the rest of the vita, come on.You know what is interesting, this university is a tier three university and what they didn’t understand was someone that went to a tier one school would only come there for a job and would leave as soon as they got a better job as the university couldn’t pay them what they could get elsewhere. Hmm… Maybe that is why they had such high turnover, but don’t take my word for it I only went to a regionally accreditated program what do I know?
dmaratto - June 17, 2010 at 8:47 pm
This all starts much, much earlier, when we’re students.In high school, kids who got into the “best” schools look down upon those who “only” got admitted to the state school/lesser private college. To quote Tom Cruise’s character in ‘Risky Business’ after bombing his interview with Princeton, “Well, looks like University of Illinois for me!”Speaking of the orange and blue, at my alma mater, a frequent chant at hockey, basketball and other games against places like Western Illinois (another, but less prestigious, state school) would be: “Junior college!” [clap, clap, clap clap clap]Then once you get your degree, it becomes progressively worse, until you come to believe that your diploma is the golden ticket and everyone else’s sucks.
goddard - June 18, 2010 at 12:08 pm
David,I’ve encountered this issue in a bit of a different context. I hold two MA degrees from a graduate school in New England. I teach religious studies at the secondary level and have been hunting for my second job for two years now. I have been told by some schools that my graduate institution is too “liberal” (especially from schools in the south and west) and I’ve been told that the institution is too “conservative” (from schools in the northeast). I chose my grad school because it offered MA degrees rather than just MDiv (ministry) degrees. It seems that assumptions about me are mad by my CV rather than talking to me about questionable issues the school might have.
jffoster - June 19, 2010 at 8:01 am
Mr. Goddard, The problem may be that they are considering why you made the choice to go to that particular graduate school and what it says about your leanings. A very low Episcopal Church or school for instance probably would welcome applicants from Virginia T S or maybe even U of the South (Sewanee) but wouldn’t even consider someone who chose to go to seminary at Nashotah House — very high church.
sleewhite - June 25, 2010 at 12:48 am
I would like to comment on the Ph.D. v Ed.D. debate. I hold an Ed.D. from a program that was very research intensive. In fact, my college of education is consistently rated in the top three in the country. In faact, I chose the Ed.D. track because of the research that was being done and respected scholars in Curriculum and Instructions. At times, I did wish that the Ed.D. track was not as rigorous as it was. However, I am confident that I can hold my own against any Ph.D. in my field in terms of research, publications, and teaching.
desi3101 - June 26, 2010 at 10:33 pm
yasulh do you have contact information such as an email address. I am a student at Walden University where I am pursuing a M.S. in Mental Health Counseling. I would like to get to know you and get information from you if thats ok.
oldcommprof - July 11, 2010 at 5:48 pm
To the list of unacceptable degrees I would definitely add Walden, desi3101. We used to have a Walden Ph.D. on our faculty. She was incompetent and lazy. The one we seem to see more than a few of lately — and avoid like the plague — is Regent.