Purdue Global (PUG) EdD in Leadership and Innovation

[walruspanda]

I'm finishing up a PUG MSIT next month, and I was considering going for an online IT Doctorate next -- hard to justify on an ROI basis (since I'm in my mid-40s), but I really enjoy learning, it'd be partially paid for by my employer, and hey, Dr. WalrusPanda has a nice ring to it. 

The trouble with this, I've found, is basically threefold:

• PhDs are long and expensive, and I'm impatient and cheap. (University of the Cumberlands' online PhD in IT is probably the closest to what I'm looking for, but it's still a three-year program.)
  
• DBAs aren't really what I'm looking for, and there aren't a lot of cheap RA DBA IT options out there anyway. (South College has probably the best for my situation, but reading the AI issues discussed in their unofficial FB group have me a bit skittish.)
  
• More practical IT doctorates are few and far between. Middle Georgia State has a really interesting seeming DScIT program, but because I don't get my Masters until late March, I can only apply for the Summer 2025 cohort, and I don't know if I want to wait that long. 
  

However, because I work in the educational sector (in an IT role), I also started to look at EdDs, and there's a lot to like about PUG's EdD:

• If you come in with a Masters (which you're required to), it looks like you can knock out 30 credits immediately as your cognate electives, getting you a third of the way through the degree already (assuming you want your cognate to be in what your Masters is in).
  
• The remaining 60 credits are $420 a credit, making the degree cost around $25,000 -- maybe a couple thousand more with fees. Not bad. But for PUG grads like me, though, it gets dropped to $336 a credit, which seems like a pretty great deal.
  
• From what I've read on FB, the 700 courses can be taken two at a time, which means that the degree can be finished in 8 10-week terms, or about 20 months. I couldn't find any other RA EdD that could be finished that quickly.
  
• Discussions on FB seem to imply the workload is...not easy, of course, but reasonable for a doctorate program.
  

It's not quite exactly what I was looking for in a doctorate, but it has enough positives for me it's a serious consideration.