The Professional Doctorate: Its Relativity to the PhD and Relevance for the Knowledge Economy

Abstract

The Professional Doctorate (ProfDoc) is attracting increasing attention because of its perceived greater than the Doctor of Philosophy's (PhD's) focus on meeting the needs of the knowledge economy. The paper examines the nature of the ProfDoc vis-a-vis the PhD and identifies significant characteristics of the ProfDoc, especially in respect of relevance and performativity. It then analyses these characteristics in the context of the professional Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) in Information Systems (IS) at an Australian university. An ethnographic approach is used to examine the internal (university) and external (student) environments of the DBA(IS). Recommendations are made to increase its effectiveness for the knowledge economy, including moving to a greater student and industry centred approach. Finally, conclusions are drawn to determine its relevance to the knowledge economy.

Measuring online learning approach and mentoring preferences of international doctorate students

“…Learning mode or style differences between candidate and supervisor may cause coping difficulties (DeVries, 2002;Wang & Farmer, 2008), social isolation (Ali and Kohun, 2007;Dondlinger & Jones, 2008) and/or de-motivation (Earl-Novell, 2006Fink, 2006;Neumann, 2003). A 'learning style' is not a fixed trait, but ''a differential preference for learning, which changes slightly from situation to situation .…”

“…The key factors most often discussed when examining the supervision quality/learning context include: attrition, motivation (Earl-Novell, 2006;Fink, 2006;Neumann, 2003), communication supervisor-student relationship (Neumann, 2003), and dissertation methodology (DeVries, 2002). Ali and Kohun (2007) describe an attrition factor related to being apart from their peer communities of practice relationship called ''social isolation' ' (p. 36), which relied on the work of Lovitts (2001).…”

Contemporary trends in professional doctorates

“…Already, we are seeing increases in the amount of coursework integrated into many PhDs. Universities are also receiving criticism from the public about the self-serving nature of the PhD and its lack of utility (Fink 2006, Kehm 2007a). In the face of this pressure, the professional doctorate is receiving greater support from all quarters: from students who are looking for more employment options, those which exist outside of academia; from employers who regard the professional doctoral student as having greater value as they are infused with a functional array of real world skills; from society who, through the influence of government, maintain that the professional doctorate and all that it entails provides a greater societal return on investment than the PhD; and from universities which are seeing greater economic returns through the enrolment of more feepaying students, and which are capitalising on the benefits of stronger ties to commerce and industry as a result of the business networks that professional doctoral students bring.…”

Professional Doctorates in Management: Toward a Practice-Based Approach to Doctoral Education

“…This partly reflects the lack of a common understanding of how a professional doctorate thesis or portfolio should differ from a PhD, given the novelty of professional doctorates. Examiners of professional doctorate theses and portfolios still tend to use the same criteria as they do for PhD theses (Fink, 2006;McWilliam et al, 2002;Walker, 2008), despite concerns about the appropriateness of these criteria (Johnson, 2005). As well as having different epistemological relationships with academic disciplines, knowledge of and in professional practice has a uniquely applied nature, whereas in a PhD the knowledge sought can be purely theoretical.…”