Walden University

Date: Dec 31 1969
Major: Public Policy (This Major's Salary over time)
Walden University provides a rigorous online doctoral degree. It doesn?t come with lots of bells and whistles, nor does it come with a ton of snob appeal. If it is snob appeal that you?re searching for, then by all means, go to another University. The last thing I want to read is another Walden U review that is based on an individual?s angst over the ability to wow their neighbors. Move on.

Walden, however, does provide a true doctoral experience. By the end of your dissertation, you have worked ? and worked hard ? for your degree. If you really have any doubts about the quality of program, just look at all of the accreditations that they?ve garnered for their majors. There are professional accrediting bodies affiliated with their education, nursing, public administration, public health, social work and business programs. Surely a diploma mill would not go to these lengths to prove itself to ensure the quality of their degree. Are all of these professional organizations wrong? Really? But if you really want to see additional work, go look up and read a few random dissertations from Walden graduates and see for yourself. Compare those dissertations to, say, a dissertation from a state school like Morgan State, Kean University or Seton Hall. You?d be hard pressed to tell the difference. Oh ? and just so you know ? while other institutions have run afoul of their regional accreditor, Walden just had their accreditation renewed for another 10 years.

Now it is an online degree so you do have to be self-motivated and very organized. There are no parking problems as you would experience at a ?live? school, but the work is still due at a certain time. Every course, as you would expect, requires research papers, hundreds of pages in articles and books, and independent work. I keep hearing this comment that ?you are teaching yourself? which is just baffling. If you were in a ?live? institution, you would also be teaching yourself. Doctoral work is predominately independent work ? you are supposed to be out there creating new knowledge. Hello! Even with that, you do get feedback from your instructors that help guide your research.

Walden isn?t a perfect institution; it can certainly improve on a few things. It can look at how it admits students into their doctoral programs, but the weak students are gone fairly quickly (I argue that these folks shouldn?t be admitted in the first place). It can do a slightly better job at quickening the approval of the research proposal. And finally, it must become more competitive and offer even more scholarships to high end students.

Look, if you want a tenure track job, and you need the degree to fulfill some great vanity drive, then by all means, find another school. Walden?s good, but it can?t stroke your ego. If you are committed to social change, and you want to be an active scholar-practitioner, Walden has all of the pieces needed for you to get the job done. I just finished my doctorate and I already have two chapters in two different books on my research topic.

You do have to be entrepreneurial with this degree. You can?t sit back and expect the world to give you a lifetime tenure-track 2 classes a semester job at $100G. That?s not happening for Walden graduates. But if you have a quality research topic, are dedicated to your discipline and to the University?s mission of social change, you will be able to produce quality applied research.

For the folks that thought online learning was somehow easier than ?live? institutions, think again. I can?t wait for the next 10 years to unfold when even more folks will have taken online education and then ? finally ? the myths surrounding the rigor of online learning can be dispelled.

I?m proud of my Walden University degree. My dissertation and work can stand on its own. If you were one of these delusional folks that tried to enroll and then dropped out after a year, then that?s on you. Please look in the mirror before trying to stain the integrity of a University that is composed of hundreds of scholarly professionals.