This week’s Chronicle of Higher Education features a story about Arthur Levine, President wordpress???????! of the Columbia University Teacher’s College, and a somewhat controversial report he wrote back in March 2005. The report focuses on the education of school leaders. Levine’s suggestion to eliminate the Ed.D. degree caused a particularly strong reaction from education schools. cheap MLB jerseys Many academic librarians, certainly those in administration, are themselves holders of the Ed.D. While I think Levine’s argument for some sort of M.B.A. in education curriculum for those who want to be K-12 administrators makes sense, I would argue that the Ed.D. should continue on as a valuable degree for wholesale mlb jerseys higher education administrators. For one thing, most Ed.D. programs will have a track in higher education administration that offer a good mix of theoretical (e.g., governance, history) and practical (strategic planning, statistics, law) cheap jerseys courses that will enable a library administrator to have a far better understanding of higher education institutions. But is writing a dissertation of much value? How does that help an academic librarian? The other good thing about the Ed.D cheap mlb jerseys (and perhaps as opposed to the Ph.D.) is that the dissertation project can focus on a practical administrative topic. The research could involve quantitative or qualitative methods, or both. That alone does a better job of preparing academic librarians to conduct research and write it up. I think anyone who perseveres through the dissertation process will be far more confident when tackling research for publication and presentation. While I doubt Levine’s report will bring an end to the Ed.D, for K-12 or academic administrators, I hope those who read the report or the Chronicle article Of will remember that the Ed.D isn’t just Eveniment for K-12 principals. It’s a degree with merit for academic librarians who want to pursue administrative opportunties – or who just wish to be better students Boilers of higher education.
Steven raises some good points about the value of the Ed.D. for academic administrators (including librarians). In 1991, Fife & Goodchild edited an issue of New Directions for Higher Education entitled “Administration as a Profession” that looked at the significance of doctoral study (specifically in Higher Education Administration) for academic administrators. While the numbers are dated in the excerpt below, I’ll bet that the basic idea still holds:
“As of 1987, there were 88 higher education doctoral programs in American colleges and universities . . . . According to a survey of the directors of these programs (100% response rate), the major purpose of over 90% of these programs is the educational training of higher education administrators, and over 65% of these programs indicate that the training of administrators is their primary purpose” (p. 5).
Keeping in mind that many would-be administrators do not have access to one of these programs, we can assume that many will complete doctoral studies in more broadly pitched programs in Educational Leadership, etc.
Which brings the next, obvious question – what about an Ed.D. in Library & Information Science? Most Ph.D. programs in LIS that I know of are focused on preparation of faculty (and, often, specifically in areas related to IS). Seems like there is a great niche market opportunity for the leading LIS program that develops an Ed.D. focused on preparing the next generation of library administrators (succession planning, anyone?).
Good points Scott. I like the idea about an LIS oriented Ed.D., but Gorman might suggest they first need to clean up their act with the MLS.