It is wise to plan a career well in advance and a common question I asked by colleagues and friends is what are the actual differences between a Doctorate and a PhD? Are these degrees of equal length? Is a PhD considered to be of higher quality than a Doctorate?A PhD and a Doctorate are in many cases worth the same and can be considered approximately equal.

The both require the same number of hours, normally 60 semester hours. The main difference is that the PhD dissertation is more theoretical, while the Doctorate is more practically based and applied.

If you are in a position where you need to make the choice of which to study then more often than not it is common sense. Go with the course that will suit your personality and style. If you have conducted yourself in a majority research role and want to stay on that path, go with the PhD, otherwise, take the Doctorate. This is a better option for those students who would like to ‘hit the ground running’ in the world-of-work before they actually start their post-doctorate job.
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Doctoral education in the United States, though the envy of the world, needs serious reforms that require a new emphasis on the creation of “intellectual communities” that will change the roles of both professors and graduate students, argues a book being released today by the Carnegie Endowment for the Advancement of Teaching.

The Formation of Scholars: Rethinking Doctoral Education for the Twenty-First Century (Jossey-Bass) emphasizes the importance of some concepts — like intellectual community or having professors in a graduate program actually talk among themselves about their goals for the program — that at first glance may sound a bit obvious. But surveys of graduate students and professors collected for the book illustrate that such basics as having a departmental consensus on graduate education are nothing to take for granted. The surveys in fact found that major aspects of doctoral programs aren’t well understood by the professors who require them or the students who must complete the requirements.

While the book goes to great lengths to say that it is not suggesting an overhaul of everything in graduate education, it could be read to be suggesting numerous significant changes. For example, it says that a key feature such as the qualifying exam is currently offered in many cases without a departmental vision of what it is for — and with students left confused and frustrated. Dissertations, the book argues, are defined in a much too narrow way. And the apprenticeship model, in which a graduate student theoretically learns from a learned scholar in the field, needs to be rethought to, among other things, get away from the idea that any one professor can provide what’s needed. (more…)