I read through Jill Biden’s Ed.D thesis.
…
Opinion: if I was one of the people who signed off on this (pages 3 and 4) I would be very quiet about it if someone at a party started spouting off that Jill Biden deserves to be called “Doctor”.
I read through Jill Biden’s Ed.D thesis.
…
Opinion: if I was one of the people who signed off on this (pages 3 and 4) I would be very quiet about it if someone at a party started spouting off that Jill Biden deserves to be called “Doctor”.
Even the introduction of the dissertation is an horrid mess.
There doesn’t seem to be any possibility considered that the reason students quit is that what’s taught is useless or incompetently done.
And she even uses the word ‘undeserved’ rather than the fashionably woke and presumably intended ‘under-served’:
“Introduction
Delaware Technical and Community College serves a highly diverse student body
in terms of age, gender, race, and socio-economic status. The needs of the student
population are often undeserved, resulting in a student drop-out rate of almost one third. ”
Frightening.
Ah, here I thought she had gotten a doctorate at a younger age.
Nope. At 55. As the wife of a long-term senator.
Like, literally, the only things she’s of any note for, publically, is being the wife of Joe Biden.
From a quick glance (that’s all that it takes to read) it’s more of a pfft paper than a PhD paper.
I was one of the people who signed off on this (pages 3 and 4) I would be very quiet about it
Their theses may well have been just as thin.
That’s a PhD paper? ummmm… yeah…. m’kaaaayyyy…
One of the better sallies I remember from a PhD examination was along the lines of “You have submitted two excellent PhD theses bound together. Why did you chose to do that?”
The candidate’s answer was that in light of internal departmental politics he thought it best to make the award of a PhD as certain as he reasonably could.
Academic life, eh? Not that “Dr” Biden would know much about that.
Come to think of it, there’s the answer right there. Just as anyone awarded a knighthood under Toni Blair is awarded inverted commas around his Sir so Mrs Biden can have them around her Dr.
“A dissertation/executive position paper”: can anyone explain that opaque description?
Grikath said:
“That’s a PhD paper? ummmm… yeah…. m’kaaaayyyy…”
Well, not quite; it’s an Ed.D paper. Practitioner based rather than research oriented. Not really PhD level, whatever the government’s equivalencies might claim.
A nice analysis by the ESRC:
“The impact of the development of professional knowledge … varied considerably … for EdD participants, there appeared to be little impact … though frequently considerable impact for the individuals themselves … many [of whom] were employed in the public sector”
So it doesn’t advance knowledge or improve the education system, but it’s a handy way to get a government paper-pushing job if you can’t face Class 2B on a Monday morning any more.
RichardT – indeed, clearly a nice shortcut to more government salary cash.
If I were Jill Biden, I’d be the happiest person in the world right now. PhD and MSc/MA students the world over sweat blood trying to get people – anyone! – to cite, or maybe even read, their thesis. Jill’s got thousands of people reading hers right now. Trebles all round!
Quite a few people I work with take a year or two to do a Masters in Educational Leadership. I have yet to see any improvement in their teaching or leading as a result.
It is a credential only, for people who fancy senior management. A Masters looks better for a principal than a Bachelors. That’s it.
A Dostors in it would be a nice way to fill time rather than working, but serves no other purpose.
Kyle Smith at National Review wrote a couple pieces absolutely excoriating Biden’s dissertation:
“Biden’s paper doesn’t even compare her meager findings about her own community college to what happens at other community colleges, because that would have meant more effort than she was willing to make, which was questioning a few people in her immediate vicinity, leafing through a few secondary sources, and typing out long strings of nugatory prose. Her paper is dressed-up barstool chitchat, not academic work. She is certainly entitled, as insecure people in possession of doctorates tend to do, to ask to be addressed as ‘doctor,’ but the polite response should be: Sorry, I reserve that honorific for medical doctors. A somewhat less polite response would be: You’re not even an academic, you teach remedial English to community-college students, and your dissertation is kindling.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/12/the-contradictions-and-conceptual-errors-of-jill-bidens-garbage-dissertation/
I work at a STEM research center at a uni, mix of staff, PhDs, undergrads, and grad students, and the only time I hear Dr is when the students are talking to their advisors. Otherwise we’re all first names. I was filling out the online form to submit an abstract for a conference, and thought about this whole Dr. thing when it asked me for prefix or suffix, and I left off both because it just seems so pompous. In my experience, the people who insist on the whole Dr. thing also seem to be self-important gits, so that’s biased me, I guess.
Original research is the key to a PhD, from getting initial approval for the proposed area and method of research, to the final examination of a thesis. If a candidate cannot demonstrate that the sum total of human knowledge has been advanced, a PhD should not be awarded. That is why PhDs are deserving of respect, because, in most cases, they have involved a lot of hard work and dedication, and the outcome is of value beyond just the degree recipient.
The EdD does not appear to have the same requirement. There is more original research and value in MrsBud’s BA (Hons) Social Work thesis into the grief experiences of those who have had close family members commit suicide (she had to jump through hoops to get ethical approval to conduct the interviews) than in Jill Biden’s dissertation/executive position paper. And most certainly in my son’s research MSc into the communication patterns of stroke victims.
@ComputerLabRat,
The same goes for Professor, even in the UK where it usually, but not always, means something. In the US, it just means ‘Lecturer’, and in Hogwarts, ‘Teacher’.
Insisting on the honorific just tells people that you are a Twat.
How is the Delaware Technical and Community College’s application to join the Ivy League going?
Original research is the key to a PhD, from getting initial approval for the proposed area and method of research . . .
Original but, please, not too original.
Of course, much of this is women on Twitter with a PhD in “The Phallus as a tool of the Patriarchy in 18th Century Westphalia” shouting “DON’T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?” at people who dare to disagree with them on literally anything, but there is another, deeper reason: to force the public to accept as medical authorities the Sociology majors and other weirdos appointed to senior posts in Public Health, with all their insane nonsense.
Last year Public Health was a nuisance which went around saying sugar was toxic and wanting to make the poor pay more for alcohol. This year they have shut the entire economy down. They are probably the most powerful political group in the country at the moment. See why they would want to assume the auctoritas of medical doctors?
“Original but, please, not too original.”
Nowadays no doubt aboriginal research is more highly values.
I assume that Dr Biden merely followed the rule of writing theses. Copying one person is plagiarism. Copying several people is research. If she becomes the First Lady, no one will ever know who the ghost writer was.
For the left, credentials are like the medals adorning the chests of princes, you can be damned sure they never went over the top under heavy machine gun fire to drag back a wounded commrade.
Plagiarism by a Biden?
“If she becomes the First Lady, no one will ever know who the ghost writer was.”
What makes you think so? The chap who wrote JFK’s undergraduate dissertation is known, isn’t he?