Looking For *Online* Doctoral Programs For Exercise Science/Kinesiology/Strength and Conditioning

Graduate School
1

Currently i have my associates in exercise science. i live in kansas and had planned to go to kansas state university to get a phd in kinesiology. my plans have changed though and i am moving back to california (where i am originally from). california has no college that offers any exercise related degree at the doctoral level, at least to my knowledge (i checked everywhere, even on national academy of kinesiologys website). so my only choice is to find a college that offers an exercise related degree at the doctoral level all online. so far, i have only found 1 college that offers this, which is concordia university chicago. i am just looking for more options and other colleges to compare it too. so my questions are this:

  1. does anyone know of any other college that offers a degree like this? (an online only doctoral level degree related to exercise).
  2. the degreee does not necessarily have to be exercise science. it can be exercise science, kinesiology, strength and conditioining, etc i want a degree aimed at the science of exercise performance, not one aimed at corrective exercise or general health and wellness.
  3. i dont want an ed.d as i dont plan to teach, i want a phd.
2

@haloisking - I seriously doubt that you will find any legitimate on-line PhD programs in this field. It may be possible to take a few classes on-line, but most of any PhD program will be supervised research. For example, Auburn has a good program and says: “Our new Kinesiology building was built in 2013 and houses 25 laboratories. Each faculty member directs a lab and conducts novel research with their doctoral students.” Kansas State says:

“The Department of Kinesiology announces a new doctoral program in the College of Human Ecology with a specialization in kinesiology. Students are prepared to conduct research in exercise physiology or exercise behavioral science/public health physical activity.”

“The Ph.D. requires a minimum of 90 semester credit hours beyond the bachelor’s degree, including 30 credit hours of dissertation research. A maximum of 30 hours may be transferred from a completed master’s degree. A maximum of 9 credit hours can be transferred from graduate work completed after the master’s degree at another accredited university. Doctoral students are required to pass both written and oral preliminary examinations prior to admission to candidacy.”

Anyway, you could look further at the National Academy of Kinesiology website. “This site provides information about doctoral programs that focus on the study of physical activity. Numerous doctoral program titles (e.g., exercise science, kinesiology, movement science, sport science, physical education) are included but all feature the study of physical activity broadly defined to include exercise, sport, movements of daily life (e.g., gardening, picking up a glass, climbing stairs), and work- related physical activity (e.g., typing, lifting boxes, carpentry).” http://www.nationalacademyofkinesiology.org/doctoral-programs

3

Agree with the above. Thoughts:

  1. If you have an associate's right now, you can't get a PhD yet - you'd need to finish a bachelor's degree first.
  2. Why do you want to do a PhD? It sounds like you don't want to teach, but if you want to work as a researcher somewhere, and online PhD is probably not going to help you much. Most reputable departments don't offer online PhD programs, because the core of what a PhD is about really is very difficult to do online in current circumstances.
4
  1. i want a phd because i love the science of fitness. i want to have the ability to conduct research even if i dont necessarily do it directly for my career. being able to know how to conduct research is very important for understanding it, especially in the fitness industry where bro science is at an all time high.
  2. i understand i have to get a bachelors/masters before i get my phd, those are just a lot easier to find in regards to schools.
  3. i know they are hard to come by, but i have already found 1 school that offers a program like this which i stated in the O.P- so they do exist. im just not sure if there are any more.
  4. i already checked N.A.K's website, and if im correct, they only list the colleges that have a similar degree, not which ones are online. i guess i could check each college individually?
5
  1. If you want it purely for interest and you have close to zero interest in getting a job in exercise science/kinesiology research, then I suppose getting an online degree may appeal to you. I still think that your itch would probably be better scratched by trying to find a degree program that's physically nearer to you, or applying widely and thinking about relocating if you find a program that's well-suited to you.
  2. They exist, but there are not many of them which means your options are limited. They also are going to likely be for-profit schools or reputationally weak. I was only able to find two:

Concordia University Chicago - Health and Human Performance

University of North Carolina - Greensboro - [url=<a href=“https://online.uncg.edu/kinesiology-brochure%5DKinesiology%5B/url”>https://online.uncg.edu/kinesiology-brochure]Kinesiology[/url] (it is an EdD, but it’s focused on both scholarship and practice). You do have to have 3 years of experience in the field before you can be admitted.

6

okay thanks, i appreciate your guys’ help. i think im just going to stick with concordia for now; i have plenty of time to see if there are other schools that have this sort of program. you both were a real help!