ZeChocMoose

The general advice is yes, the more competitive education PhD programs expect to see a master's degree and several years of experience to be competitive. Of course, there are always exceptions and people can get in without master's degrees (unless it's an admission requirement which it is for some programs). For a reference point, my top 10 program has 3 PhD students out of about 60 that only have bachelor's degrees. They all had several years of higher education research experience during undergrad though so that put them on a level playing field with others. If you're not competitive for the PhD program, departments tend to refer you to the master's admission pool and might accept you into the master's program instead. I know this happens a lot in my program.

I am trying to finish up my dissertation this upcoming academic year and I keep on getting inquiries on what are my *fun* summer vacation plans followed by when am I going to finish. I know that they mean well - but it is seriously starting to bug me... I also try to tell myself I will have *fun* summer vacation plans next summer when I am finished and have secured a job that gives me disposable income

If your loans are from the U.S. federal government, it might be better to just focus on paying off the unsubsidized loans while you are in school. The subsidized loans (Perkins, Direct Subsidized, and Stafford Subsidized) do not accrue interest while you are in an in-school deferment. (The interest is paid by the federal government.)

If you want to teach K-12 - usually the advice is to attend a well respected nearby public university because it is cheaper and they have ties to local schools that you want to work in post graduation.

At my master's university, we had a College Counseling program (located in the Counseling department) and a Higher Ed program (located in the education policy department) within the school of education. The people that I knew in both programs who were interested in academic advising or career counseling positions did not have a problem securing this type of job post graduation. They all completed relevant assistantships and/or internships in those areas so as posters up thread alluded to -- it is more important to attend a program that is going to give you relevant experience than the exact degree.

I would argue that any good social scientist critiques and applies theories - it doesn't make them a theorist though. I should amend my statement to be if you really want to study theory, attending a Higher Ed PhD program located in the United States is not a good idea. Most departments are training students to become higher education administrators and there are a few departments (like a handful) that are also training students to be empirical researchers. For the most part, higher education is thought of as a practical degree with honestly little to no theory training unless you are at one of those handful of programs teaching theory because it is important in empirical research. I know that this is different in Europe where the study of education is much more theory heavy - but it is not the case here. There also not any academic jobs for people labeling themselves as higher education theorist in the U.S. either because once again the departments are training practitioners not theorists.

Higher ed is a field that borrows theories from other social science disciplines and applies them to help explain their empirical work. If you are only interested in creating theories - this isn't the right field for you.

I would pass. Higher ed master's programs don't expect applicants to have research experience and are much more concerned that you have relevant education experience or at the very least education-adjacent experience. Also trying to complete two internships, be the first author on a research paper, applying to grad school, and still attending college seems pretty unsustainable to me. At the very worse - your performance in one of those activities may suffer and/or you'll suffer severe burn out. Instead - I would focus on doing a great job in the two internships that you have already committed to.

No one that I knew who left thought they wouldn't finish - it just happens sometimes because priorities change and finishing doesn't seem as important anymore. It is far better to accept that as a possibility and work to make sure that doesn't happen than to think that won't happen to you because you are more "focused and responsible." I also don't think that people who don't finish are flaky or irresponsible - but that is a whole other discussion... My suggestions would be while you are still on campus is to meet with all your committee members about your proposed schedule to finish and ask them how frequently they will be willing to read drafts. I would ask to set up semi-regular meetings at least with your advisor in the upcoming year to check in and discuss your work. You also really want to think about concrete benchmarks you want to achieve each month (or week) to make sure you are making progress. If you can find a writing group to attend that might be helpful and an extra support. Lastly, to be kind to yourself. Learning a new job can be kinda exhausting in the first couple months especially if you have never held a full-time job before. You might want to go light in months 1 & 2 and then start adding in more time to work on the dissertation as you become more comfortable with your job. Good luck!

It is fairly common for people in my field to do this (i.e. finish their dissertation from afar while working in the field full-time) after they have reached candidacy (i.e. completed all coursework and passed the comprehensive exam) because they can secure high paying jobs w/o having completed the PhD. The people that I have seen to be more successful are the ones that secured their dissertation committee and defended their proposal before they left. They also have partners who are willing to handle all the domestic things (i.e. cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc) while you are focusing on just working and dissertating. The people that tend to struggle are the ones who leave without having defended their proposal and only a vague idea of their dissertation. That being said - it typically takes them another 2-4 years to finish part-time with 2 years for the people with defended proposals and 4 years for the people w/o defended proposals. Some of this is because they end up taking jobs where they have a lot of responsibility and are working 60+ hours a week which makes it difficult to find the time to do the dissertation and the energy especially if you are in charge of all the domestic stuff. Do you know how many hours typically people work in your position? How supportive is your advisor about finishing from afar? The other difficultly I have seen is people who try to finish from afar and they cannot get the necessary support from their advisor because either their advisor doesn't want their students to do this and/or their advisor is not responsive/difficult to get a hold of which makes it impossible to progress. And of course some people just don't finish (I would say about a 1/3) because the job and/or life just gets in the way and the motivation to finish decreases the longer you are away from the program and they have a job that they are comfortable in. These people end up timing out of the program as we only have 5 years to finish our dissertations after we reached candidacy. How long do you have according to your school policies?

Yes - most likely the people in PSLF will be allowed to continue in the program but they won't enroll any new people. The students who will caught in this policy change will be the ones who are in grad school when PSLF is changed/eliminated and who made decisions based on where to go and/or the amount of loans to take out under the assumption that they will get PSLF and their debt will be forgiven after 10 years of eligible employment. (Or the ones who can't find an eligible job before PSLF changes/is eliminated.) That could be a really challenging financial situation for them as they will have to wait another 10-15 years to get their loans forgiven under the regular student loan forgiveness assuming they qualify for income contingent, income based, or pay as you earn repayment plans.

The program started in 2007 so no one has had their loans forgiven yet under PSLF. The earliest will be October 2017. My guess is that once that happens - we will start to see reforms given the high predicted cost to the govt for forgiving those loans. There is already talk of capping forgiveness at $57,500 (max undergrads are allowed to borrow from the govt) or eliminating PSLF altogether so we shall have to see how it all plays out. Another related problem is information about the program is not equally disseminated so people who may need it the most are not aware of the program. And as others have said they may not want to take 10 years to pay off their loans and/or work in an eligible job for PSLF.

What does your advisor think about all of this? In order to get a third chance at your qualifying exam, my guess is you are going to need faculty advocating on your behalf and a solid argument about why you will pass this time. Do you have anyone that will be in your corner that has power in your department? Without strong allies - I don't think you are going to be successful at overturning an academic dismissal.

I am not sure why you wouldn't drop the course at this point since it is not a required course and you feel like the assignments/professor are unclear. I don't understand what benefit you think you can achieve by staying in this course... I do agree with the other posters that you are going to have adjust your expectations for graduate school. The main difference between undergraduate and graduate classes is that you are expected to be a much more independent learner which means that you need to take stock of your deficits and go proactively address them either through seeking out the resources independently, going to support services/centers, and/or getting advice/recommendations from advanced students in your program. Ultimately, though, you are responsible for your learning. I don't know how your grad support center works - but I know my writing center is about helping you to communicate your ideas well and it is not about checking whether you have completed the assignment per se which seems like was the problem based on your previous posts. So perhaps you are expecting too much from this grad support center and this is not their function i.e. checking for assignment "completeness" ...

I can see myself doing 1 of 2 options depending how risk adverse I felt: (1). (Most risky) I would hold out for Lab 4 and then if the professor didn't get funding - do some new lab rotations in the fall. My only concern with this is what happens with your funding for your second year if you haven't joined a lab yet? (2) (Least risky). Join Lab 2 - that seems like the least worse lab for you. I know you said you felt like you were in prison (really - not good!) - but is it possible that the PI is just like that with new people to the lab and would back off to about a 5 on the independence scale? Could you ask advance students in the lab? If that is not the case - could you try to reset your perspective about this so while you have a more hands on PI that is not your preference, perhaps there are benefits to that that you don't see quite yet - i.e. less floundering/going down rabbit holes?

All the Ed Policy programs that I am familiar with are K-12 focused. I am not sure if there are any Ed Policy programs that also include higher ed - usually those are in higher ed programs (which are different from student affairs programs in case you are not aware). If you wanted to pursue Ed Policy, I think you would have to broaden your research interests to consider low-income students and their educational attainment starting at least in secondary school systems. College affordability is a fairly hot topic at the moment and can be pursued in a couple different disciplines assuming you'll want to focus on building your research skills. Have you looked at economics, sociology, public policy, or political science programs? There is now a bunch of cross over with different disciplines pursuing educational topics and some of those fields have better employment prospects with a MA in the discipline. And if you are going to get another master's, it might make more sense to get one outside of education then get two different education master's as the ROI isn't going to be particularly great for the second master's in education.

This depends on the program. You'll have to bring an expertise that is outside of the core faculty's subject areas. Courses that I typically see adjuncts teach are history of higher ed and higher ed law usually because that is not well aligned with most faculty's research interests. What class do you think you want to teach? If it is a core class of the program - that seems unlikely. Usually adjuncts can teach special topics courses if they have connections to the program and there is student demand for the course. EdD or PhD is not the relevant distinction here. It is about leveraging your experience as a Ass't Director in Student Affairs to teach X course and hopefully X course is something that students want to enroll in and doesn't overlap with the other courses that are offered.

Just a note that GREs are only good for 5 years. On the two admissions committees I sat on in two different higher ed programs - GREs were not that important in the general scheme of things. Faculty were much more interested in SOP, recommendations, academic preparation, and research fit (at the doctoral level).

I just saw an announcement for an international summer school on higher education research in St. Petersburg, Russia, one on cluster-randomized trials for education research in Evanston, Illinois, and a data institute to learn more about U.S. federal education data in Washington, DC. I don't know much about them though or anyone who has done it - but perhaps you would be interested in them. I don't think any of them are funded though. I agree with others that 1.5 months is not really long enough to offer your services for research especially if you are "cold calling" faculty members. Here is first blurb: The Institute of Education at National Research University – Higher School of Economics (Moscow), China Institute for Educational Finance Research and Graduate School of Education at Peking University invite earlier career researchers, institutional researchers, and doctoral students, to apply to the upcoming IV INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL ON HIGHER EDUCATION RESEARCH. The theme of the Summer School 2016 is “HIGHER EDUCATION, SOCIETY AND STATE, and it will be held from June 4-10, 2016, in St. Petersburg Russia. The format of the Summer School includes seminars, discussions of participants’ research projects, master-classes on research methodology and writing articles for academic journals. The working language of the summer school is English. Participants must have a strong command of spoken and written English. Further information about the International Summer School on higher education research can be found here: http://ioe.hse.ru/en/announcements/172571273.html Here is the second blurb: The National Center for Education Research (NCER) is accepting applications for its tenth Summer Research Training Institute on Cluster-Randomized Trials (CRT). NCER, a part of the Institute of Education Sciences, hosts this Training Institute to increase the capacity of researchers to develop and conduct rigorous evaluations of the impacts that education interventions have on student outcomes. The institute will be held from July 18-28th, 2016 at Northwestern University in Evanston Illinois. For information is here: http://www.ipr.northwestern.edu/workshops/annual-summer-workshops/cluster-randomized-trials/ Here is the third blurb: With support from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the Association for Institutional Research (AIR) operates the NCES Data Institute: Using IPEDS, Sample Surveys, and Federal Datasets to Support Research on Postsecondary Education. The Institute is an intensive introduction to NCES datasets and research methodologies using large-scale national data sources. The NCES Data Institute (NDI) aims to achieve four major objectives: (1) Stimulate interest in using IPEDS, Sample Surveys, and other federal data to address current and future research questions in institutional research, the social sciences, and education; (2) Instruct participants in the methods of using IPEDS, Sample Surveys, and other federal data to conduct analyses; (3) Enhance understanding about methodological and technological issues relevant to IPEDS and national sample survey data collections, and (4) Encourage collaborative research studies between participants and agency staff to improve future IPEDS data collection and analysis. The online application process closes March 31, 2016. For additional information and to apply, please visit http://bit.ly/1oKVt5F

The problem I see is that EdDs don't have the greatest reputation in the academy nor do online degrees. So if you are going to pursue an online EdD - you are going to be fighting the perception that your degree is not rigorous by at least some people in the academy. Since it is a new program too - you won't be able to see the track record of how the program's graduates are doing. What do you want to do with the degree? In you want to stay in admin - have you considered low residency doctoral programs? Usually, they are mainly face-to-face where you generally spend 1-2 Saturdays a month at the school and complete some coursework online in the off weeks. Since these programs are not new - you would get a chance to talk with current students and alumni on how helpful they thought the program is/was.

If you really want to pursue the PhD in higher ed - I would suggest thinking about what area(s) in higher ed you want to research since you'll have to write about it in your SOP and target faculty members in those areas to be your advisor.

The university that I did my master's at -- they let school counseling master's students do that i.e. do their internships in a higher ed office/unit. I mean - I am not sure why you would do that but it happened!

I have actually seen people with master's in school counseling get higher ed jobs in either academic advising or career counseling with relevant experience. It's true that the context is different, but they learn relevant skills that you can transfer over to college students.

I think there is a time to "follow your dreams" and there is a time to get realistic. I am not sure how old you are currently - but you might be phasing into the time to get realistic part of your life especially given that your employment is not too stable at the moment and I assuming that you don't have a spouse/significant other/family member that is going to financially support you for the rest of your life. Since there are a lot of jobs that you find interesting from your original post - "philosophy, teaching/education, counseling, social work, or educational counseling" -- I would start exploring the ones where there are more jobs available and are going to give you a high enough salary to meet your standard of living (whatever that is). Based on that, I would rule out philosophy professor given that the market is terrible and a philosophy PhD is long - 5+ years. Also philosophy professors don't just teach - they primarily do research, sit on committees, mentor students, etc. Instead, I would look into K-12 teaching or school counseling - both are jobs that you can do with a master's and are much more plentiful than trying to secure a philosophy professorship. Perhaps see if you can get a non-teaching job in a K-12 school to see if you like the environment and talk to teachers to see how they feel about their jobs.

I agree with the other posters. Getting a PhD in Counseling Psychology is overkill if you just want to do career or academic advising. A Master's in Higher Ed/Student Affairs or School Counseling should be sufficient for your career goals. Of course, you also want to get experience working in academic advising or a career center when you are completing your masters to be more marketable.