Question about University of Derby PhD and dissertation

[annae]

I was hired to help a friend of my boss re-write her Doctor of Education dissertation. We've been working on it over the past three or four months and she is ready to submit.

 

I feel strongly that it will not pass a committee. While the English has been corrected (her first language is Arabic), her methodology is still a total mess. It's a qualitative study, but it's really just a collection of her thoughts from her research diary and the responses from parents' interviews. There's a little bit of triangulation with other data, and I think I did an okay job justifying (to some extent) what she did, but I don't feel like she really answered any of her research questions. I read and integrated her supervisors' comments, which were barely substantive (ex - cite everything that isn't yours, etc.) and I think it is still very problematic. Her supervisors did not say anything about her research design, which is confusing to me. I want to prepare her for her defense, if she gets that far, and I was wondering if anyone had any information about University of Derby and what she should expect. 

 

It's my understanding from my boss that it's really a mail-order degree (she isn't living in England and doing it entirely by correspondence) and that the degree won't enable her to teach at a university, get a post-doc, etc. It's just for salary purposes. So I'm thinking it will be a walk in the park for her. But she really seems to think that this is going to be a huge deal and that she will go on for a post-doc, so I am worried for her. I can only do so much to fix it at this point, and it is her PhD, but she's a really sweet lady and I feel like I'm sending her to the wolves.

 

Do you think her defense will be difficult? Is it a bad idea to send it in with these issues? Or do you think they will pass her if her degree isn't really worth anything? Does anyone know anything about the value of this degree? I have a friend from England and he's never heard of the school and it looks pretty low-ranked from what I gather online. I'm from the US and preparing myself for the admissions process in a different area of study, for more competitive schools, so I haven't heard of "an easy defense" or know how it works in education or in England. I do know that some master's students at less competitive schools (my alma mater) got passed with little difficulty, regardless of how bad their masters thesis is, but this is a dissertation. 

 

Any guidance is appreciated!

[annae]

Oh, wow. Ha. Thanks! And that's exactly what happened, too.