In Defense of Degree Mills
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James Joyner | Friday, May 16, 2008 |
My colleague Chris Lawrence contemplates the case of a private school teacher with an education doctorate from a degree mill:
Yet I am forced to wonder how much we should really be bothered when Taylor could easily have gotten his degree from an accredited and moderately-well-respected institution such as, say, SIU Carbondale, where the standards for doctorates in educational leadership don’t seem to be significantly higher at least in some individuals’ cases. If the credentials in an entire field are deeply suspect to begin with, whether the degree was bought from Uncle Bob’s House of Academia and Animal Husbandry or “earned” at Harvard really doesn’t seem to make that much difference.
Well, there is that.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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Diploma buyers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose except the stigma of your degrees!
I'm going to be a big hit in faculty meetings, I can tell already.
You'll be fine in the departmental meetings--it's just those meeting involving administrators who desperately want to be called "Doctor" too and their leadership "doctorates" that will be strained.
I'm sure it's no coincidence that the preferred medical nomenclature for male member malfunctions is E.D. So close to Ed.D. it's scary.
