<p>“The fundamental conflict here is right in the thread title - between the words “easy” and “respectable.” The easier the program the less it will be respected. The balance you are looking for out may be out there there somewhere, but it may be tough to find.”</p>
<p>So are there “lame” but easy PHDs out there I can go get?</p>
<p>More than a few PhDs make fun of EdDs – doctorates in education. Many PhDs consider EdDs easy and a scam to get promotions if you’re an elementary/high school-level teacher with administrative ambitions. </p>
<p>And before you start yelling, I am not a PhD nor do I have a stake in this debate. I’m only sharing what I’ve heard on more than one occasion.</p>
<p>I’ve heard similar things about Math Education masters. About how they don’t know any math and such.</p>
<p>I am sure there are solid Ed.D’s out there, but I’ve had several teachers I know describe colleagues who sit at computers during class time turning in obviously shabby work to online programs which will eventually lead them to be Dr. So and So with a higher pay grade.</p>
<p>“Most of the chemistry PhD’s I know worked their buns off, in the lab, day-in-and-day-out, 12-15 hours a day for 7 days a week, no summer vacation, no Christmas vacation, for at least 6 years. Parts of the research did involve ideas not their own, but the sheer volume of work involved pretty much negates the whole premise of the OP’s question.”</p>
<p>Time spent in the lab is not necessarily directly proportional to the PhD-thesis quality work and results. Many young people come into the labs with only a limited number of skills and amount of hands-on experience, so by my estimates, 20-25% of their time is spent on mastering the skills needed to produce publishable results. I think it is not the amount of work that our OP is asking about, it is amount of time to the degree that he worries about. If he can find a professor who can be convinced that with the OP’s skills and experience he can produce a PhD thesis and pass the qualifying exams in 3 years, that would be the “easy” PhD he is talking about. However, it is very unlikely that such a lab can be found - many PhD advisors would not want to set a precedent of early graduation (and heck, they would love to keep the highly skilled graduate student for as long as they can because he can churn out more papers than someone new and “green” who needs training and ramp up time!).</p>
<p>m.s, I don’t know anyone who received a PhD from ‘Western Southern State Branch Campus’ (public), but I did work with someone who later obtained a CS PhD from a middle of the road private tech school. He told me that the work we did for a defense contractor (with our little old BS and MS degrees) was harder than the work he did for the PhD. So I have to assume that going to a lesser school means less work for the PhD.</p>
<p>As for what field would be easier - I’d look into average time required for obtaining the degree. Some fields are really time consuming.</p>
<p>I recently investigated PhD programs in a specific major at 4 universities within 50 miles of my home. Two of these were ivy league universities. I cannot begin to tell you how enormously different the requirements and the commitments for each program were. Absolutely astounding.</p>
<p>[Doctor</a> of Social Sciences | Victoria, BC Canada University](<a href=“http://www.royalroads.ca/program/social-sciences-doc]Doctor”>http://www.royalroads.ca/program/social-sciences-doc)</p>
<p>Easy and designed for the working professional but pricey! It is a sad but true fact that the easiest programs are usually the most crazily expensive- sorta like ‘buy a degree’.</p>
<p>I have a PhD from a top school in my field. But a PhD by itself is meaningless to actual academics because there is such gigantic variation. Even with similar quantity of workload, the intellectual ability requirements and standards may be extremely different. It is all about where it is from and in what field. Practically anyone with an existing college diploma and enough bucks or search effort can find a PhD program suitable for them. But even the lamest ones it might be impressive and influential to those that do not know any better. </p>
<p>So while you can’t have an easy PhD that would be respected in academic circles, you might be able to pull of an easy PhD that is respectable to other audiences. When I see a writer, a consultant or speaker promoting themselves as expert with a PhD, I look to see what it’s in (does it match what they claim to be an expert in) and where it’s from (and the absence of that info is revealing).</p>
<p>Think out side of the box. Look for PhD programs in PHIL such as at DePaul. Or PhD in leadership or organizational management, project management. Most phD candidates can teach at colleges as a ABD (all but defense) which means you passed the classes but havent done the dissertation. I looked inot PHD programs in accounting. There is a shortage and the carrot and stick has been extended to people to pursue PHD to teach.
There is a difference between on-line and LOW RESIDENCY. Many very reputable programs do a low residency. </p>
<p>Search for programs at DOE/College search. Input advanced and pick a topic. Then expand the PROGRAMS TAB to see how many PHd vs Masters etc they issue each year. </p>
<p>I figure this resession will be around for a while so why not use the relaxed downtime to brush up on credentials?</p>
<p>If you are willing to pay for it all yourself, there are probably lots of schools that would be thrilled to have you. I’d especially look for the ones that enroll lots of community people in their classes. Once you’re in, you just need to find an advisor who is willing to work with you. If you aren’t going to need any recommendations from the advisor and you’d guarantee to be out of his hair in five years, you’d likely find someone who will agree not to be too fussy about the quality of your thesis.</p>
<p>Just look at the Chronicle of Higher Ed Forum under job search, or google it. We had over 300 applications for one position last year.</p>
<p>^^In reply to sax above (couldn’t get the quote function to work properly).</p>
<p>What area are you looking at? Obviously, any Science Ph.D. would require lab work, which cannot be done on line (or so I naively assume) . So you may have to move from Science/Engineering to another area.</p>
<p>I know people who have done Ph.D.s though for profit Schools or On-Line Schools and they have been in Business, Information Systems and Psychology. I have read some of the IS and Business final research paper and to me they were long term papers. They would not have passed muster as a Master’s Thesis at my university. However, they were painless (one of the persons was someone who dropped out of my doctoral program, and I know that he wrote his whole final paper in about a month’s time, when it took months to write one chapter). </p>
<p>So yes you can get one, but you need to chose your topic and area. The mentors (they are not called advisers) often have very little knowledge in your area and you may have to teach them instead of the other way around.</p>
<p>Also, a student who was doing this program in Business went out of her way to tell me it was a not a Ph.D. but a doctorate. I at that time did not understand the difference but apparently that University calls them Doctor of Management programs, Doctor of Education and the reason is to emphasize that is a applied nature of the degree and not to confuse it with a a reserach based degree. I still do not understand it but…</p>
<p>BTW, the school this lady was talking about is the largest University in the country in terms of number of students, so I would assume it has some respectability. I am sure you can guess which school I am talking about.</p>
<p>If you don’t go to an online program - if you go to a respectable PhD program - you are GOING to work your buns off for 5 years. It’s kind of inevitable. Don’t get me wrong - I don’t really care about publishing; I like to do research but I’d really just like to teach at a small college or regional university or even a community college. So I know how you feel. But it’s just the nature of the beast that you have to slog through 5 years of PhD studies to do that.</p>
<p>Even if you adore the subject - I love psychology and I love public health - it’s still a lot of hard work and you will probably have to take a class or two that you are not interested in at all. PhDs, even the mid-tier ones, are never just a piece of paper…they are experience, and are regarded that way by anyone who hires doctoral degree holders.</p>
<p>Ironically the easiest way to get the credential just for higher pay, assuming you have a job you want to keep, is to do an online PhD program.</p>
<p>But I don’t agree that PhDs guarantee unemployment. There are a lot of positions that require a PhD. It may be difficult to get an <em>academic</em> job, but if you get a PhD in a field with jobs outside of academia you can find it very lucrative.</p>
<p>
Currently working on stupid science PhD from state flagship - yes there was a semester of lab, but the research doesn’t have to be experimental. It can be entirely theoretical, and not require further work in a laboratory.</p>
<p>Have PhD in humanities from a non brand name school. The program was brutal; orals worse, and dissertation was a killer. And my dissertation won prizes. I still had tremendous arguments with my committee and a host of other high level problems.</p>
<p>As I said, a non-brand name school, but understanding of theory still expected to be cutting edge.</p>
<p>I love my discipline so I was truly ecstatic about the rigor of the program, but it certainly didn’t fit the qualifications of the question.</p>
<p>And yes, I am employed, and only slightly underemployed. Still, I am teaching full time in higher ed and off to deliver paper at a conference in the fall.</p>
<p>Hey, Bunsesn - I think the length of time in the lab (in my experience) was not so much reflective of the skill set of the grad student but more reflective of the career of the professor for whom one worked. My professor did not have tenure himself while I was there, and he was exteremely driven to publish and present. Those lab hours I mentioned? He expected that, and more, and he could care less how good your skills were! He just wanted your blood sweat and tears so he could get tenure. I have talked to other students of Dr X - ones that worked for him once he got tenure - and I hear he’s morphed into a completely different person.</p>
<p>And I heartily agree about keeping grad students for as long as possible!</p>
<p>Have read some but not all posts on this thread but must say that I find the underlying question silly and rather offensive. The point of a PhD is to show you have really achieved something; it is not meant to be easy. The employment outlook as far as full-time jobs in higher education in some fields is pretty dim for recent PhD recipients even from brand-name schools; the tenure system is probably well on its way to being replaced by an adjunct system at all but the very tippy-top undergraduate programs. A “cheap” PhD should not exist. When I think of all the late-twenty- and early-thirty-somethings who worked really hard for five to seven years to earn (and I really mean earn) their PhDs in history or English or other “soft” but intellectually valuable fields, and are now scrabbling to piece together adjunct careers or leaving that kind of academia completely, I cringe. And they’re the ones with degrees from really good schools–the kind of schools that when they mention they have a degree from there people are impressed. I cannot imagine that PhDs from lesser schools are doing any better. Getting a PhD is not a game you play to show off or find a winning angle.</p>
<p>I’m offended that my offensiveness offends you! And I’m indignant at your indignation about my offensiveness! Consternation! Uproar! Good Lord.</p>
<p>Anyway, I was looking at the website of a research group in the mechanical engineering department of a large university—US News Tier 3, for whatever that’s worth—that specializes in an area that I’m very familiar with through my work in plastics manufacturing. I was struck by the fact that, from the papers on the website, their research seemed less involved than a lot of things I do daily, and I’m just in manufacturing, not R&D. They were conducting experiments that didn’t seem to go far beyond the trial-and-error of starting up a new production line. They just collected more data, but not a lot more. This doesn’t suggest to me that I’m doing really impressive work—far from it—but rather that, due to my professional experience, I could write a reasonable dissertation right now.</p>
<p>I suspect, therefore, that there are Ph.D. programs at real, respectable universities that would not be especially challenging for someone who already has significant experience in that field. There would still be a lot of work to do, I’m sure, but perhaps it wouldn’t be any harder than their regular job.</p>
<p>(I know I just offended a dozen readers by daring to suggest that I might work harder at my job than you did for your Ph.D. To those readers I would like to say a big, sloppy THPLSSSSTHSPLLLLSTTTHT.)</p>
<p>I thought this was a nice fun topic after all the drama of post-launching stories…I have a PhD in Econ. I don’t think it was easy but, I had a supportive husband. Honestly, it was some of the best years of my life…and I found the material “easy” to master. I was able to work as a TA and RA while I studied topics I loved. In some ways they were amongst the easiest years because I felt I had a lot of flexibility in my choices–classes, professors/bosses, dissertation topic, etc…I had one baby and another pregnancy during the 4 years of the phd program and only relied on daycare part time, take classes that fit my schedule and teach at night. Impending second child was a great motivator to finish the dissertation and I defended 7 months pregnant. WOuldn’t have chosen any other way. I didn’t envy the single guys slogging it out alone. </p>
<p>But…if I was seeking an “easier” doctorate just to get the title…I think an education PhD is less demanding, time wise, and content wise. Not that it isn’t useful to society…just an observation that many people get these while working full time as teachers and still complete them in 3-4 years. Just observing…</p>