Doctoral Degree without a Dissertation?

[polly_mer]

Other sciences likewise only require three publishable/published papers as the equivalent of a dissertation.

As I recall, someone explained it to me by saying that the students were increasingly expected to publish each chapter of their dissertation separately, anyway: in the interests of getting their work out more quickly, it was decided that, if coherent enough, they didn't need an overarching lit review, methodology section, etc. because those things would appear at some level of detail in each paper already.

The change happened gradually, I think, starting maybe 15-20 years or so ago; at least, that was when I was temping in an engineering department as an EA and asked the question myself.

Evolutionary academic behavior, apparently, results in interesting forms of speciation among disciplines.

M.

I was required to write a literature review and a future work section to add to my three published papers and one publishable-but-not-yet-published paper 15-20 years ago in materials engineering.

As someone mentioned upthread, there's no point in rewriting my papers into a different format when I had already cleared the bar of producing original contributions to the relevant literature.

However, the old school department chair insisted that everyone write a real literature review and a real future work section that identified gaps in the literature and what the next steps in this particular project would need to do to fill appropriate gaps.  When I left the research group, I spent a couple more years affiliated with the group to mentor the undergrads doing the daily work and serve on the committees for the master's students who took over the project for their thesis work.

[the-tenure-track-prof]

As noted earlier, there are psychology programs that do not require a dissertation. I find it bizarre and hurt the profession if the program does not have any vetting mechanism for doctoral students who are not doing well in the program. I came across several PhD programs that do not have a qualifying exam or any student requirement before entering doctoral candidacy. I was in a high research activity university. There were stages that a doctoral student needed to move through to get to candidacy; one of those stages is the qualifying exam, which was a 10 hours exam. That was great because I love a challenge and scored the heist score in my cohort. There are other ways to examine doctoral students to ensure that only those who can succeed will be granted candidacy. This way, the program vetted those who were not good students. Some universities give different names to the qualifying exam, which requires the Ph.D. student to learn the material taught in class and then come ready to answer any question taken from any of the doctoral courses.

[Malarkey]

Thanks for the commentaries, these were very useful.

It must be a challenge to keep up standards for empirical evaluation of evidence when doctoral students are not required to perform original research studies. The scientific mindset does not come naturally to many clinical practitioners in psychology, and I've always felt that the research-based dissertation requirements help promote an empirical mindset when evaluating evidence for treatments.

[Puget]

I agree, and that's why I don't think most PsyD programs are much good, but that's what makes them different than PhD programs-- they aren't research programs. I think it is unhelpful/confusing to lump PhD and non-PhD programs together which you are doing here by referring to them as doctoral programs  -- technically of course they are, but a PsyD, EdD etc. is a very different beast than than a PhD.

[secundem_artem]

MD, DDS, PharmD, OD, DO, ODT, DPT, DC, DNP.

I'm a bit surprised to see so many people who are surprised.  These things are not rare.  They may require a major project (mine did which I later published) but not a full scale dissertation.  As noted above, they are not to prepare for a research career, but a clinical career for which research skills are helpful, but not crucial.

[sonoamused]

I was shocked at a meeting at my institution to hear someone say that there is a debate in higher education as to whether the dissertation is really a necessary piece for doctoral degrees (in psychology). I have never heard this before, and it stuck me as a severe type of apostasy.

Has anyone heard of such a thing before? Doctoral degree in social sciences without a dissertation.

I work with at two Social Science programs that allow article publishing (with a some extra writing) instead of a dissertation.  For many that are going into a non-academic path, this makes a lot of sense.