<p>Okay, this is just a goofy idea, and I want to get some reactions to it.</p>
<p>Suppose you wanted a Ph.D. strictly as a credential. For example, say you’re mid-career and qualified to be R&D Director of your company due to your experience, but you want to bolster your chances by having a Ph.D. on your resume. Or say you want to make a career change and teach at a small college where you wouldn’t have to have cutting-edge knowledge in your field, but a Ph.D. would give you an advantage over candidates with only master’s degrees.</p>
<p>You wouldn’t want a Ph.D. that’s a joke, like an online college, but you also wouldn’t want to work your buns off for it for five years, since you’re doing it mainly for the piece of paper. Are there any realistic options?</p>
<p>Remember this is hypothetical. I know that this would be a terrible reason to get a Ph.D., and that it’s kind of naive to expect to get one without a lot of hard work. But just suppose you’re looking for the best balance of reasonably valuable credentials without having to devote your life to academic study. What would you do?</p>
<p>I know someone who was able to get a pretty snazzy job with a Business Ph.D. from a mostly easy program in Florida, so it must have been fairly respectable. Let me see if I can figure out what school it was…</p>
<p>Even if you love the subject, it can be really hard to get through the dissertation requirement of a Ph.D. That’s why I floated the Ed.D. and the Dr. B.A. ideas.</p>
<p>It’s very difficult for me to imagine an “easy” Ph.D. program. Some of my classmates spent years from beginning to end on their dissertations. In addition, it sounds like you have a full-time job and would need to earn your degree at night. If that’s the case, you would likely have no time outside of work and school for quite a long time. Would it be more efficient to put the time and energy into a project/improvement/innovation, etc. at your current workplace to prove your value? I’m really curious to know how much companies care about that piece of paper when they have a highly competent person right in front of them (which I’m sure you are already).</p>
<p>There has been a serious glut of Ph.D.s for the last 30 years; a Ph.D. in this economy virtually guarantees unemployment in most fields, even Ivy Ph.D.s. Seriously.</p>
<p>As someone with a “real” Ph.D, in physics, from HYP, I agree with fogcity about an easy Ph.D. program being an oxymoron. And I will add that this is as it should be. </p>
<p>Don’t start moralizing. Congratulations in advance to everyone with a HYP Ph.D. We’re all impressed. Now, as I said in my original post, “Remember this is hypothetical. I know that this would be a terrible reason to get a Ph.D., and that it’s kind of naive to expect to get one without a lot of hard work.” I hope that’s good enough for you.</p>
<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>The “easiest” graduate degrees to acquire are probably those that require the smallest amount of independent, original thought and insight. They require <em>plenty</em> of work, but as long as you keep moving along doing that work competently a degree will ensue in reasonable time. Certain types of science degrees where one can join in on-going research in a lab and write up one’s portion of it, for example, tend to yield degrees on schedule.</p>
<p>Contrast this to degrees which require original thought, in the dissertation in particular. It is that kind of degree that tends to take a long time, partially because it is prone to ending up in blind alleys requiring new topics and more exploration, and so forth.</p>
<p>At least this is my observation based on the academic careers of those in my acquaintance.</p>
Well OP also gave an example that someone who wanted to teach at a college. Most colleges would hire a PhD over a Master’s Degree in a given field any day.</p>
<p>My H is a director of R&D in software design (has his PhD). He would prefer to hire other PhDs to work for him, but will settle for Masters if they have industry experience. But, he likes to read their dissertations and see examples of their research, etc. before he hires them. I think he can tell the difference between a “real” PhD that involved significant research and one that was merely handed out for putting in the time. He would never even look at someone who had an online degree. H is also adjunct professor at “name” university and same goes in the academic world.</p>
<p>Oh, dear. The PhD’s I know in the sciences would never characterize that time as “easy.” remember this qualifier from the OP: “you also wouldn’t want to work your buns off for it for five years, since you’re doing it mainly for the piece of paper.”</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>I guess I look at certain Ph.D. programs and wonder how they can possibly be very difficult. (That’s naive, certainly, especially since I have a research-based master’s degree and have seen firsthand how hard people work toward the Ph.D.)</p>
<p>I’m thinking of the difference between, say, a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Flagship State on the one hand and a Ph.D. in, I don’t know, generic “technology” from Western Southern State Branch Campus. I certainly don’t mean to minimize the work required, or how much one learns, at the latter. I just have a hard time imagining how it could be as difficult as the former. But maybe it is! I don’t have experience to know.</p>
<p>Then again, I can imagine the opposite could easily be true. I’ve heard it said, “You always run harder when you’re in second place.” In other words, the seemingly lesser program could actually be more rigorous, because the more highly regarded program has less to prove, and therefore makes its students jump through fewer arbitrary hoops in order to prove their worthiness.</p>