Cost of South College DBA program?

[DrMacLeod]

Can you speak to the quality of the program and the time it takes to complete each course? Is there guidance on the Dissertation phase or is it a Final Project?

I will speak about my experience thus far.  I have not made as much progress as I had intended due to other pursuits, but I can see that the path to "acceleration" is open.  There is a difference between what I had considered "CBE" based on my experience with WGU and my experience with South.

The difference between this program (at least the courses I've taken part in) and WGU (specifically the MBA program) is that instead of PA/OA assessments, South utilizes a formative/summative approach.  The courseware provides you with guidance and instruction, and there are times when you are directly reflecting on activities in the reading.  Contrast this to WGU, where if you have a suitable background (like IT or project management), you can knock out the PAs without ever looking at or referencing the courseware.  So it's not as "easy" to clear a course at South as it is at WGU.  Each course has a different number of formative and summative assessments, so it's hard to quantify the time commitment.

I believe the core courses are set up to help build your writing so that you are successful when it comes time for the dissertation.  The penultimate course focuses on research methods and analysis, and the dissertation is the final course, with a requirement of at least 100 pages.  The guidance for the research is to use fixed data sets for the dissertation (to avoid IRB hassles), and I believe the choice of qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods for the research is up to the student.

My interactions with faculty and staff have been great.  Nothing negative to report.  While the program is still going through growing pains, it is clear its intent is to make it a quality program.  For assessments, course instructors grade the work and give direct feedback.  Everyone has been receptive to my feedback, which is encouraging as a student.

A current student has a YouTube channel that gives a great breakdown of his experience since starting in July (he's already finished two courses).

https://youtu.be/JXTeb1C-i-0

Hopefully, this is helpful for those interested.  I would suggest joining the "official" FB group to ask questions and review what has already been asked and answered.  The program team also has fireside chats every once in a while to help answer questions.