Accelerated PhD Program
Accelerated PhD Program: How does that work?
Everywhere you look online lately you see ads for education. Degrees, distance learning–the Internet has made education more accessible to a wider variety of people than ever before. And more and more adults are going back to college, and balancing school against work, or family obligations, and so on.
So colleges and universities are coming up with ever more creative ways to extend their programs to these “non-traditional” students–at this point, one wouldn’t be surprised to hear “non-traditional” students are beginning to outnumber traditional students.
The “accelerated PhD program” is one of the newest ways colleges and universities have expanded their offerings. But how exactly does an accelerated PhD program work?
Condensed Classes
The major way that PhD programs can be sped up is by condensing the time spent doing “in class” work. Most accelerated PhD programs are online, rather than in classrooms per se, but the same concept holds true. Most accelerated doctoral programs spend less time doing coursework, which gives their students longer to work on their dissertation, and, in theory, it shortens the overall time it takes to get the degree.
Special Requirements
An accelerated PhD program will almost certainly require a master’s level degree as a prerequisite, due to the demanding pace of the coursework, and the level of independent motivation a student in such a program will need to have.
Also, no amount of “acceleration” planned by the college can make you do your own dissertation faster! Much of the responsibility for whether or not an accelerated PhD program will be finished in a shorter time will fall to the student.
Accelerated doctoral programs are great if you are already an expert in your field and, basically, just need to do the legwork to get the diploma. They’re not a great way to explore things you haven’t considered before, in depth.
|
|