EDD versus PhD

I’ve been spending some time counseling newly admitted and incoming students to our august institution; many have been admitted to Master of Education (EdM) degree programs, which we call the ‘advanced masters’ as it requires 60 credits to 32 for the Master of Arts (MA). I’m comforted by the fact that most of these students know that if you already have an MA, an EdM does little to add to your professional lustre and qualifications - there’s really very little purpose to getting an EdM if you’re simply interested in getting another master’s, unless you’re doing this for a career-change (in which case the MA would still suffice). Rather, in my opinion the only reason to pursue an EdM is because you are interested in going on to a doctoral program, and cannot do so or do not want to do so (for whatever reasons) forthwith. (I emphasize this is my opinion; I’d like to hear opposing viewpoints).

Unlike some other graduate schools of education, TC offers both the EdD and PhD, and sometimes the differences are blurry - I’ve been asked a number of times to clarify my take on the divide; other people have different interpretations. To my mind, the differences depend to some extent on institutional history and policy, but at CU there’s always been some initial confusion as to why the perceived ‘pride of place’ should be given to PhDs when the PhD requires only a ‘measly’ 75 credits to the EdD’s 90. This reflects a grave misreading of economies of educational prestige, as if the number of credits should determine professional reputation. It strikes me rather that EdDs still have a brand recognition problem - few people I query who work outside of education know what an EdD is (a dental degree, one thought, confused by all those ‘D’s), and indeed most of our EdD slots are usually taken up by school administrators and the like, i.e., by people who are already working within the pre-defined confines of the educational system. For them, the EdD serves as an ‘internal’ marker of sort to differentiate the ordinary schoolteacher from the school administrator who wants to go on to run a school system, god bless (whether or not the EdD will provide them with the skills they really need for this task, who knows, but at least with the EdD they can go and make a run at that superintendency - our former president had a lot do to cast a pall over the EdD). But in any event the career of the EdD student is regulated almost entirely by and from within the faculty of education, whereas the PhD requires the external review of the dissertation by a committee member or two from the arts and sciences faculty, completion of foreign language / statistics requirements, and so on.

In my own field - comparative and international education - the EdD / PhD distinction is more problematic, since the field isn’t attached to a highly structured or organized occupational system in which the distinction functions to allocate people to different slots (gosh, I have to get John Meyer out of my head). It’s commonplace to say that the EdD/PhD distinction is a distinction between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ or between a ‘vocational’ degree and an ‘academic degree’; but that doesn’t hold up on closer inspection. EdD students in international ed are required to acquire and demonstrate the same competency in theory as the PhD students; the same questions appear on our respective certification and specialization examinations. It’s just that the EdDs ostensibly focus on a particular field of ‘practice’ (such as educational policy or humanitarian education) in their dissertations - but are still expected to apply the best disciplinary and methodological and theoretical tools available to defend whatever claims they want to make about that field of practice. Similarly, the PhDs focus on displaying competency in and making contributions to a particular academic ’specialization’ (such as poli sci or sociology, my concentration), but we almost uniformly are required to discuss something in the ‘real world,’ i.e., concrete phenomena that bear upon real problems in education and education development (a dissertation in so-called ‘pure’ theory or philosophy, while not officially disallowed, would nevertheless lead to general discombobulation and blank stares among the faculty). Yet the courses we take are virtually the same, and the quality of our work really doesn’t depend on anything programmatic than on some combination of intelligence, initiative, good luck, and the competency and skill of the advisor, all of which cut across the EdD/PhD divide. The distinction seems to me to be insidious because it encourages some EdDs to favor the EdD, thinking they will be able to talk about ‘practical things’ rather than engage in theory and research (this is a calumny if taken to be a criticism of all EdD students, but there are sufficient numbers who express this attitude that it does hold a measure of truth). But at the same time it allows PhDs a smug superiority that isn’t really warranted - they don’t do more serious work by virtue of their degree category; they do better work only to the extent that they do better work. In brief, I favor abolishing the distinction (although, of course, as a PhD student I favor abolishing the EdD, not the PhD).