Getting my doctorate online (neuroscience)

[Mr.WeakTight]

My friend earned an online Ph.d in online education. there was about one week a year of live classes. the rest was all on line. he also teaches at the online law school (concord).

If you google a program that you're interested in and nothing comes up, and you search the legit. online school's catalogues and don't find your program, then there's likely to be no such animal.

[NickMPK]

A doctorate usually consists of 1-2 years of classes, and then 3-5 years of dissertation work and teaching. But during all this time, the most important things you are doing are networking with people in your field, learning about what are currently the important questions in your areas of interest, absorbing and critiquing as much of your colleagues's work as possible, and establishing a reputation for yourself. I don't see how a person at an online school does these things. For example, do you really think papers written by an online PhD program student are going to be accepted for presentation at major conferences or for publication in the relevant academic journals?

[Yort Mada]

is it actually a fake phd? i was attending UT medical, and can no longer make it (health reasons). i already have about 8 years of lab work. i have the dean, and a few other doctors as a referrence. eventually getting a job wont be the problem, continuing my schooling will.

i've done lots of searching via google, i cant find anything on neuroscience.

[ThreeMartini]

Have you tried posting this in SMP? I think one of the mods (RDuke)? is a neuroscientist.

[Gugel]

imagine if you were going in for brain surgery and you found out your doctor got his doctorate online...lol

[Yort Mada]

no i havnt, but i'll try that. thank you.

[Yort Mada]

[ QUOTE ]
imagine if you were going in for brain surgery and you found out your doctor got his doctorate online...lol

[/ QUOTE ]

yes, that would be bad. i'm all research, is the difference. like i said, i already have eight years exp. i'm already doing what i will be doing after i get my doctorate; i'll just be in charge instead =).

[Thalum]

I think some people are confusing a PhD in a science discipline with something like economics or history or english. All the latter require "book" research to complete the PhD, which could concievably be done "at home" or in a traditional setting, however all science based post-secondary degrees are 80%+ labwork, with just a small amount of coursework, which need to be completed in a wet lab, consisting of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in scientific equipment.

Such a degree is not feasable to be completed at home, whereas the other degrees could be.

I work in a Scientific research lab at a University (Lung diseases, etc) so this is not heresay, I live this everyday. The neuroscience lab is just down the hall from us, same setup.

[Patrick Bateman]

online classes and degrees are very common nowadays, for example i got my license to kill from the internot, its just great. that one guy i know who wanted his doctorate online died a horrible dead though. fortunately that is not your Q.

[diddyeinstein]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
A doctorate gotten solely through online courses would be one of the bigger pieces of [censored] I've ever heard of. Having such a degree would be almost fraudulent.

[/ QUOTE ]

I work in online education for one of the leading honest to goodness real schools that does stuff like this. Very few PHD programs are offered totally online. You're always going to have at least some degree of onsite classwork.

That said, the notion isn't nearly as laughable as you suggest. We're mos def moving in that direction.

[/ QUOTE ]

There is no way we are moving towards this. Yes online programs are gaining some forms of credibility due to the absolute ignorance of lawmakers. This is almost solely responsible for the the amount such schools are putting into the coffers of politicians.

The truth is unless there is a drastic change on the curriculum and credibility of the vast majority of programs, it will in no way be comparable to traditional forms of degree attainment.

I work in higher education, and while I suppose many of my feelings on this topic can be drawn from the fact that schools such as the one OP is discussing detract from our student base, I just can't see any reasonably well informed person treating a degree like the OP is suggesting as in any way comparable to that attained from a traditional 2 or 4 year college or university.

Yes I know that came off completely elitist, but this mass commercialization of higher education is a bad, bad thing.