<p>Couldn’t resist linking to this post by Mark Perry on his blog. It shows that candidates for doctorate degrees in education have the second lowest GRE scores compared to other fields of study. The only ones who scored lower were those who were planning to study public administration. SAT scores show similar rankings.</p>
<p>Not sure, but I believe the vast majority of public school administrators who hold doctorates have EdDs, not PhDs.</p>
<p>For those who are harsh critics of public education and of government administration, these numbers are food for thought.</p>
<p>Not so sure that I’m worried about education being second from the bottom - medicine was 4th! If you want a smarty pants look for a physics major!</p>
<p>Twenty years ago, while working as a special education teacher in Colorado, the state offered me the opportunity and resources through a leadership grant to pursue an Ed.D at the University of Northern Colorado. My program focus was leadership, administration, and research methods. The program required a full year of residency; advanced courses in learning theory, organizational development, and administrative practices; full complement (as in two years) of basic and advanced research training; four days of written comprehensive exams; research based & formally defended dissertation; and three month community agency management field placement. </p>
<p>Here are a few examples of what I have accomplished as a result of by training:</p>
<p>Research (Published or Presented)
◦ Behavioral predictors of Fragile-X syndrome (a chromosomal disorder)
◦ Neonatal bilirubin exposure and long-term educational outcome
◦ Effects of treatment & time to intervention on recidivism of alcohol related arrests
◦ Behavioral & health outcomes of Arctic Natives practicing an indigenous lifestyle
◦ Effects of Federal lighter safety regulations on fire starting behavior of children</p>
<p>Research Management & Stats (Project Manager or Principal Investigator)
◦ Effectiveness of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome treatment programs
◦ Identifying the environmental determinants of autism
◦ Treatment decision modeling associated with breast cancer treatment outcomes
◦ Efficacy of enhanced foreign language instruction on acquiring greater proficiency
◦ Established a human research compliance program</p>
<p>Leadership
◦ Health services research program (Developer/Director)
◦ Clinical pathway development (Director)
◦ Office of Medical staff administration & training
◦ Community based action research projects (Consultant)
◦ Corporate and governmental health agencies (Administrator/Executive Director)</p>
<p>Academic (Teaching & Research)
◦ Associate Research Professor
◦ Research Associate (University Institute dedicated to Circumpolar Health Issues)</p>
<p>The training I received through the EdD program provided me with a comprehensive set of skills that I continue to apply to a wide range of research, management, academic, and community based venues. Within the context of my cognate, my skill-set is equivalent to my PhD counterparts. But, to use a military saying, Im constantly in the field getting my boots dirty while my PhD colleagues generally focuse on theory, design, model development, and experimentation. Both degrees have value and, actualy, can complement each other. Anyone remember fraggle rock?</p>
<p>doubtful that nursing was a cause as there are so few pursuing doctoral studies. Could be including other health fields more likely to be at a doctoral level such as optometry, pharmacy, chiropractic and podiatry.</p>
<p>Just passing through here with a mere Master’s degree, but had to comment on this:</p>
<p>“And no, you don’t need anyone’s permission to resurrect an old thread. It just takes skill to find the thread in order to post in it, (unless you happen to remember the name of the thread) and thats not something new posters are often savvy at doing.”</p>
<p>Or you could just google “EdD vs PhD” - this comment thread is the very first link that comes up.</p>
<p>Yes, heatheringe, or whoever you are… as I said **unless you happen to remember the name of the thread<a href=“or%20a%20major%20part%20of%20the%20title”>/B</a> Then its quite easy, through google or cc.</p>
<p>There are no PhD’s in “medicine”! There are biomedical science PhD’s, but they’re hardly bottom of the barrel and who likely fall under “biology.” Maybe that chart was taking about veterinary school applicants, who do take the GRE. Vet school is insanely competitive, but the GRE isn’t weighted that heavily–GPA, vet experience, animal experience, research, and recommendations (and interview, of course) are the key criteria.</p>
<p>I’m in the College of education at Walden University finishing my PhD and there is definitely a difference between a PhD and EdD. First and foremost the PhD is 133 Semester hours while our EdD is only 54 hours. Also, the EdD does not require a dissertation and many less residency hours. </p>
<p>Talking to many PhD outside of education, the perception is that an EdD or for example, or a PsyD are less rigorous degrees based without personal research. That’s why I opted for a PhD, the research was important to me for publication reasons.</p>
<p>Not exactly. Psychology has a PsyD degree. I have an Psychiatrist friend who is an OD and a PhD. Do you not consider psychology, within the medicine realm. BTW, I’m not a psychology major.</p>
<p>This debate is very interesting. I’m a higher ed. administrator with a MS in CSCI who has worked in higher education for several years. I’m currently researching both EdD and PhD programs and am trying to determine the best option to meet my goals/needs, and at this point I’m leaning toward the EdD.</p>
<p>Based on what I’m seeing from this and other sources, a PhD is intended to be philosophically aligned with theory, and an EdD may be more aligned with practice (and thus why I am personally considering the EdD). However, both actually require a foundation of research, and at many schools the research required is virtually identical.</p>
<p>I do find it interesting that several responses have had some relatively negative wide sweeping implications toward a specific degree, or to a group of people holding a specific degree. At my campus, the institutional researcher (who holds a PhD) is utterly and completely useless when it comes to performing his job. Hes basically a six-figure vacuum. It’s ironic that a person who earned a doctorate in research can’t actually do research. If his ability were an implication of the entire body of people who hold PhD’s then I’d say the PhD has absolutely no value whatsoever. However, that wouldn’t really be very logical. He’s one guy. And while he really does suck, it would be incredibly short-sighted of me to think that his skill set represents every other PhD out there.</p>
<p>By the accurate admission of several members on this thread, there are a number of very prestigious institutions that only offer EdD’s from their Schools of Education. You may want to debate whether Harvard’s EdD really acts as a pseudo-PhD, but to me that’s kind of silly. At the end of the day the people who graduate from Harvard’s School of Education hold a piece of paper with an “EdD” stamped at the top of it. I’m guessing that if they’ve deemed the EdD as an acceptable category of degree, then it probably should pass our level of critique as well.</p>
<p>But what do I know? Much like our hero, the PhD-holding institutional researcher, I’m just one guy…</p>
<p>It is important to remember that an ED.D. is a recognized doctorate by the accreditation bodies of the U.S. Department of Education. It is just as rigorous as a Ph.D., and is much more applicable for people wanting to go into administration. I am currently pursuing an ED.D. in Educational Leadership. The school I am attending does not have a Ph.D. in this field. For the program, I still have to take as many courses as a Ph.D., write a dissertation, do an oral defense, and comps. So, all of the requirments are the same as a Ph.D. program.</p>
<p>Just like any other degree, you are going to have very intelligent people with an ED.D. and people with no common sense with a Ph.D., and vice versa. They both are reputable degrees, and one is not better than the other.</p>
<p>Emeraldkitty, the abstract was interesting in showing the lack of a consensus from the university standpoint.</p>
<p>I have a professional degree, not in education, worked at two top ten research universities for a number of years, and gained a great deal of experience working directly with PhDs in several different departments. My life since then has largely been as a K-12 activist with a lot of experience working at local and statewide levels on educational policy issues. </p>
<p>My impression from working with many people with EdD degrees is that the intellectual rigor apparently required to obtain one is often too little. I haven’t met many physicists, sociologists, or economists who struggle to understand and use statistics, but I’ve encountered far to many EdD folks whose eyes glaze over the moment statistics come into play. I’ve also read far too much of what passes for research and analysis in education journals and found it to be markedly weak from a research design and analysis standpoint. I don’t know why this is my experience, but the exceptions have been few and far between. </p>
<p>If the EdD is a professional degree, I’d say it does a remarkably poor job of preparing people for leadership roles they then undertake. I have personally known five people who finished EdD degrees while I worked with them, and none took longer than four years even though they were all working full time. Not many PhDs get earned with that level of work. The institutions granting EdD degrees also seem to include a number that aren’t by any stretch of the imagination research universities. Not quite diploma mills, but not respected institutions in some cases. </p>
<p>Many (most?) of the EdD folks I know work for institutions or governmental entities where their pay is largely determined by your placement on a salary schedule that reflects years of service and highest degree earned, and a significant number of people seem to pursue the degree because of the salary benefits rather than for some intrinsic motivation for pursuit of knowledge. </p>
<p>There may be fabulous EdD programs out there, and I wish that the graduates of some of them worked in ed policy around here.</p>