Doctoral degrees online: Not ready for prime time

By:  Johnathan Adams and Margaret H. DeFleur

Many debates have aired the advantages, disadvantages, educational qualities and learning outcomes of online education. However, one important question concerning online education has been all but overlooked: Are distance learning and traditional degrees equal in the eyes of academic gatekeepers? That is, if other candidates’ credentials are equal, will those who hold doctoral degrees that have been completed via distance learning have the same chance of being hired as applicants whose degrees were completed in the conventional manner?

We recently conducted a national survey to assess the acceptability of a job applicant’s qualifications that included online coursework, a topic about which there is little information. At the outset, we found search committee members were reluctant to cross the boundary of confidentiality that surrounds searches. Thus, our result reflects the views of those willing to participate, who were promised complete anonymity. It does not represent all searches, but it does provide a starting point for learning how people view earning doctorates online or partially online.

We sent a questionnaire to hiring committee chairpersons, described three hypothetical applicants who earned degrees through a “traditional” institution, a “virtual” institution and “mixed” coursework, and asked the respondents to select one applicant for the position and provide written explanations. We received 109 completed questionnaires from search committee chairs in 59 public and 43 private institutions located in 37 states, with institutional enrollments ranging between 5,000 and 35,000 students.

The proportion of completed questionnaires received from chairs in each of the four academic areas was similar (humanities, 23 percent; social sciences, 28 percent; science/technology, 20 percent; professional fields, 22 percent). The number of applicants received by the chairs for each position varied from five to 300. Most of the respondents (93 percent) offered a considerable number of detailed comments concerning their views of the different types of degrees.

The basic quantitative findings regarding the three types of doctoral degrees (traditional, combination and online only) were straightforward. When a respondent was asked to choose between recommending an applicant with a traditional degree and one with an online degree, 98 percent chose the candidate with the traditional degree. (Stated in another way, only one respondent selected the online degree.) When asked to select an applicant with a traditional degree vs. one with half the course work completed online, only 15 respondents (11 percent) selected the applicant with the combination degree.

When the respondents were asked to choose a main reason for selecting an applicant, 85 percent indicated they had reservations about doctoral degrees earned online, and only 4 percent indicated that the type of institution where the degree was earned was of no importance. When considering an applicant with 50 percent of his or her coursework earned online, 15 percent indicated that the type of institution was of no importance, 53 percent had reservations and 32 percent had “other considerations” provided as qualitative explanations.

Overall, from the quantitative results, it seems clear that a person applying for a faculty position to any of the search committees at the institutions included in this analysis would have virtually no prospect of gaining employment if he or she had earned a doctorate solely online. Moreover, their chances would be very slim if a sizable part of their course work had been completed online—even though they had a doctorate awarded by a traditional institution.

The findings suggest that, at the present time, doctoral students may need to consider carefully before investing time and effort to earn an advanced degree—whether fully or partially—online. Tentatively, the findings indicate that such degrees are not accepted as the equivalent of those earned in the traditional manner for those seeking academic employment. Finally, although the results of this study appear to cast a negative light on online education, further research addressing the complex factors in this study, as well as other influences, should be conducted.

The full study can be viewed for a limited time at www.aft.org/higher_ed/onlinecredential.pdf.