What a PhD Really Means in the US National Security Community

You don't need a dissertation. At many universities, you can choose to publish a number of articles or write a dissertation, some do both.

> I don't understand. Do you imply that in the US any organization can grant a PhD to someone? And/or that there is no control over the requirements to meet to get a PhD?

In the US, the big distinction is between accredited schools and unaccredited schools. Probably any organization could grant a piece of paper called a "PhD" to someone, but not every organization could claim to be accredited by a legitimate accreditor.

My understanding is a lot of the online-only/for-profit schools are accreddited by less the rigorous "national" accreditors. The traditional regional accreditors are more focused on academics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_accreditation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_accreditation...

Ask around at any university. Some classes can be taken online. These are the classes the students throw on top of an already full schedule for free credits because they know they are complete bullshit and will take zero time and effort. If I had a M.S. from Georgia Tech and actually did a degree program with other students in a class and spoke with a professor many times a week and dedicated 1-2 years of full-time study and then my alma mater started giving out MY degree for people who sit in their pajamas and copy paste answers off the Internet I'd be pretty annoyed since the thing I worked so hard for/paid for would be devalued. I think being VERY skeptical of any online degree is quite wise and students should be required to say whether their degree was in person or online when, say, applying for a job, etc.

Online education might be a real thing one day but it's got miles and miles to go before anyone takes it seriously. Right now it's at the level of "there are pretty good lectures that you can listen to if you're curious about a topic".

As it turns out the reason most people don't do education and have a full-time job at the same time is that they are essentially incompatible. If you are dedicating enough resources to your job to not be fired, you are not taking your education seriously (unless your period of study far extends that of traditional students by many years). A serious degree program IS a full time job even if it's only a few hours of week of physical in-class time. Online is a way to cheat and pretend you can do both, when in reality you can't and one or both of them suffers a great deal.

Back in the 90s I was working for a very large IT contractor on a very large federal government contract.

The place sucked, but that's another story. I started as a senior dev, and within a year or so moved up 3 or 4 levels.

Even after moving up, after a year I couldn't do that no more. I wanted to build stuff. When I told them I was going to leave, we worked out a deal: I'd pick a team of 2. We'd work on a project with a couple of other large government agencies. Folks would leave us alone. We'd get shit done.

So we did. In six months we delivered the project. I worked mostly from home. We 3 were delivering at a rate that was greater than the 10-20 person teams at the other agencies. It was sad.

After six months, I was getting ready to bail, but they beat me to the punch. They told me I could no longer be working at the job I was doing. Why? Because I was self-taught. Needed at least a Master's degree, preferably a PhD.

It really didn't bother me since I was leaving anyway. On the way out, though, I spoke to the number 3 guy on the contract. He asked me about a few of the PhDs I had working for me.

"They're pretty good, I guess. But this one guy? He's so arrogant nobody can work with him"

The guy basically told me that they had to fill seats with PhDs to meet the GSA schedule, didn't matter whether they did anything or not.

I liked all the people I worked with, but I'd never voluntarily go back to that kind of idiocy.

FWIW, this phenomenon is not a "US National Security Community" thing, it's a government thing (although quality control can vary).

I saw it in the Army -- enlisted Soliders get a certain number of "points" towards their promotions for completing coursework and obtaining a degree. So, they find the most expedient methods -- and for-profit schools that catered to this nonsense were all over. An entire platoon could literally pass around the same papers and get through an associate's degree together. "Criminal justice" was a popular one, for some reason.

I have lots of teachers in my family. They get a big pay bump for a Master's degree (had to be accredited, admittedly, so that's a little better). If the pay bump is the same no matter which school you go to, why not take the path of least resistance, especially when you're working full-time and raising a family? They all have online degrees from one of the local state colleges that caters to this market. I don't think they try to argue that they are better teachers for it. It's just a way to hustle for more money (and can you blame them?)

If you have to make a one-sized-fits-all rule about "this degree is worth this amount of money," you're going to run into these issues.