Full disclosure, I cannot verify that I had the latest version of the dissertation and not a rough draft, but it wasn’t labeled a rough draft and it was found through the University of Michigan. I think I got the real thing.
Now, you might ask yourself why I would read a doctoral dissertation in education, a field I am not involved in. That is a great question.
I don’t know.
It started during President Biden’s campaign when I came upon a Twitter thread where people were calling her out for not being a medical doctor but voicing her opinion on COVID countermeasures. In that specific thread, someone had tried to flex her credentials to validate her opinions on the topic, and that same individual was quickly hackled and harassed, because that seems to be what Twitter is for.
Honestly, the title of “doctor” belongs to anyone holding a doctorate in any field. Colloquially we have become familiar with it only used in the medical field, but the medical field actually sort of coopted it in order to gain respect in the academic fields when real medicine was still in its infancy. Dr. Biden actually has an educational doctorate. I verified by punishing myself with her dissertation. Outside of academic settings, it is rhetorically stupid to use the title because most people are not academics and the title implies an expertise in medicine that does not exist.
With all that said, I do respect the title and will allow for its use as long as we aren’t talking about COVID or any other medical process. However, after having read the dissertation, I’m not really sure how she earned her doctorate.
There were a few gross errors. Clearly just clerical in nature, but using the wrong word on occasion, several misspellings, and on one occasion she references a question and then provides a different question from a survey. I refer to them as gross errors, because I am not an education major, and although I have read and written quite a bit, I am not a grammar expert. The fact that I so easily identified the errors was a sign of their blatancy and not my own intelligence.
The general tenor of the paper was to determine ways to increase retention and the dissertation focused on four core areas, validated through some research of other work done and through surveys and some apparently original gathering of pertinent numbers to make the case. I think there was certainly some correlation between the numbers and survey and her intent of identifying those four areas critical to retaining students. I was very disappointed, however, as the school she chose to study, Delaware Technical Community College, also began around the same time as the Department of Education, and the entire existence of the school has correlated with the national decline in the national academic performance.
Since she was trying to identify areas to focus on to increase retention, it bothers me that someone attaining a doctorate in the field would at least address a lowering of standards as a means to increase retention. Having received my own degrees more recently, I had the sentiment at times that I needed to do the very least to pass in order to get the piece of paper. I was less concerned with learning the information at times, and especially in elective courses, than I was with just getting a grade to get my degree. I completed college as an adult, so I recognized this in myself and would spend extra time on the material to ensure I wasn’t just checking boxes. I cannot say as much for many of my classmates, especially in my undergraduate level courses.
It is not the purpose of her dissertation to identify all of the potential retention multipliers. I just found it alarming that she didn’t address a major one that I would have thought glaringly obvious.
However, it was her dissertation and telling her dissertation director and the board she presented to that their profession was increasing in retaining and graduating students because they were likely lowering standards probably would not have earned her any favor.
It would have taken courage and conviction to present something like that.
Overall, it was boring, and probably moderate graduate level work at best. I wasn’t impressed.
Perhaps if I was in her field I would have been more enamored with the topic and found it more relevant.
In the end, don’t punish yourself. I read it so you don’t have to. I don’t think it was work worthy of earning a doctorate degree, but then, perhaps I am being unfair since it isn’t a topic that I find very interesting to begin with.
What I do find interesting is learning in general. Learning things that people have intentionally determined to hide from us during our education or they tainted in the information in a way that it wasn’t quite accurate to what actually took place is sometimes the most fun. The Politically Incorrect series is fantastic and their book on Capitalism doesn’t disappoint.
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