South College announces competency-based DBA

[ss20ts]

I recently joined the facebook group for folks doing the EdD there and saw some frustration at getting ahold of mentors, a few posts on grading taking longer than it should but didn't see any mention of anyone expressing that they were getting the run around regards dissertation.

In fact, a few posts wondering who was at that stage and a recent post that only maybe a couple at ABD given it only started last October. In March there was a post that it looked like one person may finish in a year (so this Oct) and 2-3 others may be close.

Having talked with Dr Patrick a few months ago regards the program, I was left with impression that the dissertation was very important to the school because they knew many students would be accelerating and the dissertation's would be under some scrutiny among the academic community. Given that it would not surprise me that they are applying some rigor that may frustrate some. But, flip side is any doctorate program should apply rigor on them. My thinking is a dissertation for a doctorate is something that doing in 6 months  full time would be a challenge even using existing data as South College does. Most practitioner programs for doctorate (EdD, DBA)schedule a year for them and talk alot about extensions, a PhD of course many schools actually will schedule between 2-4 years just for writing one

Of course, given that some other for profit schools have gotten in trouble for dragging people on for years at the dissertation stage I can understand and even share concern there.

I have been considering doing the EdD in Org Leadership, now thinking about DBA vs EdD and would like to see where current students doing EdD are regards dissertation.

There have definitely been complaints about getting responses and grading taking awhile including the dissertation. Part of why a PhD candidate takes so long to write their dissertation is all of the research they have to do. They have to draft surveys and conduct studies. Then they have to analyze the results. They're not doing any of that at South College. They're using already collected data. Some people aren't great at writing and take along time to write. I've written far more pages than a dissertation in the last year so I will never understand why it takes 2 years to write one. I know many people drag their feet with it thus the extensions and programs that are all but dissertation. Don't forget that the longer it takes someone to complete their dissertation the more money the school is making. None of those extensions are free.