Whoring After Money
As Florida Atlantic University demonstrates, there's always the temptation for universities to prostitute themselves for cash.
A couple of articles appeared today on the subject.
The Gazette, a Canadian newspaper, notes that
The worst kind of controversy that could affect our universities is the suggestion our degrees are for sale, that foreign students can simply fork over enough money and get a piece of paper attesting to proficiency.
The danger to Canada's reputation abroad is what makes the charges against the Universite du Quebec a Montreal's executive MBA program in China so serious. As The Gazette's Peggy Curran found, 11 students enrolled in UQAM's executive MBA program in China are said to have been admitted despite speaking virtually no English. This represents more than an impediment, since half the classes are given in English.
The Chronicle of Higher Ed discusses rising anxiety among serious university people about the proliferation of Ph.D.'s lite:
[S]ince there are no standards defining the professional doctorate [that is, a doctorate that tends to be about brushing up job skills for people already employed full-time], they say, there is a tendency to use the term "doctorate" very loosely. While a Ph.D. takes on average about 12 years to complete from the start of college, the new degrees, sometimes mocked as a "Ph.D. lite," typically take six or seven years. (The occupational-therapy degree is often completed in five and a half years, though new standards will require six years as of January.) Generally the new degrees do not require a major research project.
"For the last 15 or 20 years," says John D. Wiley, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, "we've been under pressure to take what is basically a master's degree and call it a doctorate."
In recent years Wisconsin introduced professional doctorate programs in pharmacy and audiology. Mr. Wiley says many faculty members initially opposed the programs, which some considered a cheapening of doctoral education. But in the end the university went ahead because it did not want to lose enrollments to institutions that were already offering them. Unhappy as they may be, Mr. Wiley says, "no one institution can afford to boycott the process."
... [T]he new degree programs are usually run by institutions' professional schools and are outside the "coordinating oversight of graduate school." Worse, [one] report says, many of the new programs are popping up at institutions "that offer few if any other doctoral programs," leading to concerns about their quality.
There are even fears, the report concluded, "that the new degrees will erode the integrity and primacy of the research doctorate in U.S. higher education."
...One issue that particularly troubles educators is the degree programs for people already working in a profession who want to upgrade their qualifications to a doctorate. Known as postprofessional, or transitional, programs, they operate under virtually no supervision because the professional associations generally accredit only entry-level programs.
... [I]f educators do not cooperate [in fixing the problem], ... weaker and less scrupulous institutions will see opportunities to make money from low-quality programs.
"In the worst case," [one observer] says, "you'll have a competitive rush to the bottom."
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