To be considering a doctorate?

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It's not as if I need one (does anyone?) but I am thinking about it. I already hold an MEd and I'm just finishing an MA in Special and Inclusive Education. With the OU an EdD would take 3.5 years from next May with a 50,000 word thesis (which will make the 20,000 word dissertation I'm ploughing through now seem like a short story). We are planning to emigrate in two years' time and I work full time as a primary teacher. Am I deluded?!

I am sorting of looking into this at the moment, aside from time what about money? Will this boost your earning potential? £15k is a lot to spend because studying gives you a buzz.

Is an OU doctorate on par with a red brick uni one?

Is an OU doctorate on par with a red brick uni one?

It depends ....

Go for it OP.

Thought I was a bit flabbergasted when you said you had to write a 50,000 word essay; I struggled to to do 10,000 for my dissertation.

Yes dolkapots it is - I believe that there are rigorous standards for undergraduate and postgraduate courses across ALL universities. So, my OU BSc(Hons) is as good as anyone else's and so is my OU MEd.

Fit my undergrad is also OU and whilst they are supposedly the same I don't think that all are necessarily given the same weight by some employers/organizations.

I speak as a Humanities person....I think the OU can produce as good a PhD thesis as anywhere else.

The quality of a doctoral thesis can be over a wide range. There's the 'just scraped through with a not-very-rigorous external examiner' through to the 'has the potential to make an outstanding contribution to the field with groundbreaking research and examined by an external who is at the very top of the field.'

Thought I was a bit flabbergasted when you said you had to write a 50,000 word essay; I struggled to to do 10,000 for my dissertation.

notgivingin, as pp have said, 100,000 words is the standard requirement for a Ph. D. thesis in some subject areas! 50,000 words would be an M. Phil there.

Agree with eme and Harriet. It's not the same as main PhD's. The one an my field need t have components for the basis that are actually needed by others, I've you cannot just pick a topic for your thesis and do it.

My problem with the professional/taught doctorates is that in 50,000 words (in the Humanities, anyway) you don't have to make the same extended & sustained argument as over 80,000 to 100,000 words. A scholarly monograph in the Humanities is around 70-80k words, and the PhD is expected to convert to a monograph.

But for someone who's primarily a practitioner (lawyer, teacher) then a professional doctorate might be doable. Just not the deep knowledge and research required for a standard PhD.

I agree foggybottom.

My PhD thesis is not meant to exceed 75,000 words

A PhD should make a significant and original contribution to the field. It's supposed to break new ground and be based on extensive and independent research. The candidate should be able to go out and develop their own research skills/training in the course of developing their thesis. Evidently, professional 'doctorates' are a different animal from an academic thesis.

I've just looked at the regs for my (redbrick, RG) university.

For a standard PhD, the limit is 80 000 in humanities and social sciences, 50 000 in STEM. What are referred to as "Professional Doctorates" are 50 000 and 40 000 respectively. These limits have come down in recent years: I'm pretty sure that when I first registered the limit in STEM was 60 000 and in humanities 100 000, but I might be mis-remembering.

For what its worth, John Nash's PhD was 27 double-spaced pages long, and contains two references, one to his own work, one to a paper by Von Neumann. Rather like the Velvet Underground's first LP, of which it is said that everyone who bought it formed a band, every page of Nash's thesis is dense with new research areas and it's said that his viva took about thirty minutes. I'd be surprised if it's much more than 12 000 words.

Why do I want to do it? Because I get an enormous buzz out of learning.

That sounds like the best of all reasons for wanting to do it. Would it be worth considering other universities, though? I know someone who's doing a PhD at Lancaster University (or it might be an EdD, I don't really understand the difference). It's on Education and Social Justice and she absolutely loves it. It's all taught online, she doesn't have to go there. Maybe there are other options than the OU, unless you're really committed to that one.

And there's always the example of Wittgenstein.

But very very few of us are Nash or Wittgenstein. And I'd be prepared to bet that, by its very nature, a professional doctorate would very very very very rarely (if ever) have that sort of impact. They are mostly professionally oriented for training, as much as research.

What's the downside if you start and have to give up? How much money would you lose?

I think those would be my main considerations. You don't seem to need it for work, and it sounds as if it might be more manageable than a PhD and so more suited to doing while working, and you obviously enjoy it, so I can see why you'd want to.

One thing that occurs to me is this. I know you're not really asking a question when you ask who does need a doctorate. But, IME, lots of people who do them, need them for the job they want to do - ie., academia. So, they are not just writing the thesis, they're also teaching and publishing and doing conferences and networking, and all the other stuff that will make them employable. And that is a big part of people at the end of a PhD might think you'd be unable to fit it into your working life - they're not taking into account that you will not need to do these things unless you happen to want to.

I think robins has hit the nail on the head. It's not just a PhD that many/most people do. It's about embedding yourself into academic life. I think it would have been even harder and lonelier if I'd been trying to do a PhD on my 'own.' I would write more, but I need to get off the train!

There are some unashamedly snobbish posts on this thread (spoken by someone with a science PhD from a RG university).

Is it snobbish to be wanting to preserve the PhD as the highest level of degree which can be earned? And to have a bit of a concern that a professional doctorate isn't quite the same? It's about preservation of standards in a serious matter - not snobbishness, unless you think that research is not a serious matter?

I mostly agree with Robins' point that if you don't want to be an academic - full-time researcher and/or lecturer - then a lot of what is involved in a standard PhD is not relevant, although ... the exchange of ideas, debates, collaborations, dissemination & testing of ideas (through publication, conference presentation & so on) is, in my view, just as important in developing the original contribution to knowledge which is what a PhD must be.

Research - even in my specific field in the humanities which is often seen as the ultimate in 'lone scholar' research - is not an isolated business. Ideas, work, arguments must be shared for them to develop. So all the ideas about "doing things online" ad "never having to go to your university in person" really worry me. They miss the point of a contribution to knowledge, and the development of and contribution to a scholarly community.

Well, my post certainly wasn't meant to be snobbish, and I'm sorry if it came across that way.

A bit of an unrelated question but I start the MA in special needs and inclusion at my local uni in sept, how did you find it?

I didn't say the sentiments expressed are snobbish, but the posts and the way they are phrased are snobbish.

I'm doing a PhD part-time whilst also working full time. Not even job related but I enjoy it and want to be a Dr! My weekends are spent doing research but it's not too bad. Most full timers I know only spend half their week on their PhD with the other half on side projects so I don't think you need to commit more than 10-15 hours a week max part-time.

Do it if you really love the subject.
Don't if you want to just say you have one as you will be sorely disappointed.
As you can see from the thread there are varying opinions on PhDs.
Will it improve job prospects?

An Ed D is less research than a PhD. Typically, the student completes the Masters Degree and then transfers to the EdD for two more full time years conducting and writing up research. I supervise both PhD and EdD students, and the EdD thesis is about 2/3 the work of the Phd. Someone who does a Masters and a PhD does one more full time year than an EdD student. EdD students tend to be teachers who wish to research and teach. PhD students tend to want a career in academia. They are different. I think it is marvellous when teachers pursue a doctorate. Why wouldn't we want all our teachers to be active participants in research?

Word limits in a thesis are so variable. A quantitative study will be fewer words than a qualitative study, etc. You can't pre-judge content based on word limits.

OP, I think you can't do it and work full time unless you are happy to spend all your evenings and weekends on your doctorate degree. But, if you can spend the time it can be fantastic experience.