> but the qualification (from whichever accredited university) would open up a lot of opportunities
I'd caution about this - if you think you can apply to jobs requiring a PhD I would think that when you apply the first thing they're going to do is to ask you who your advisor was and what you did.
Unlike a bachelors just having a PhD isn't worth much - they will want to know what you actually achieved. If you have a PhD on paper but didn't really achieve much they're going to say 'huh but I've never seen your work in the community?'
> from whichever accredited university
I'd say the single most important thing on a PhD is where you did it and who your advisor was, so I would caution about this as well.
Having said all that, I did all my PhD remotely, and I did it while working mostly full-time for half of it, and while buying a house and building a family and serving part-time in the military on top of all that, so it can be combined with other things.
I have heard exactly the opposite from people who work in the administrative side of academia. If your future job prospects are research-based, sure it matters. But if you just need to hold a doctorate to apply to be a president of a local college, or to get a leg up on a superintendent job at a school district? Any doctorate is fine.
> But if you just need to hold a doctorate to apply to be a president of a local college, or to get a leg up on a superintendent job at a school district?
This is the entire purpose of the Ed.D. degree, as a box ticking exercise for promotion purposes. A JD will work as well, and that doesn’t even have the pretense of being a research doctorate the Ed.D. does.
Totally agree. This is definitely the case for places where the PhD actually matters. Except for a large number of jobs in NY (finance) and in DC (government), it is just a binary flag used to whittle down the candidate pool. In Government it is especially bad as some of these credentials are used for pay increases.
I'd caution about this - if you think you can apply to jobs requiring a PhD I would think that when you apply the first thing they're going to do is to ask you who your advisor was and what you did.
Unlike a bachelors just having a PhD isn't worth much - they will want to know what you actually achieved. If you have a PhD on paper but didn't really achieve much they're going to say 'huh but I've never seen your work in the community?'
> from whichever accredited university
I'd say the single most important thing on a PhD is where you did it and who your advisor was, so I would caution about this as well.
Having said all that, I did all my PhD remotely, and I did it while working mostly full-time for half of it, and while buying a house and building a family and serving part-time in the military on top of all that, so it can be combined with other things.