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The purpose of this paper is to assess the prestige of the Doctor of Ministry (DMin) among Roman Catholics in leadership positions, who may be a potential market for this degree.

In a mail survey employing a comparative rating scale, respondents rated the prestige of the DMin relative to six other doctorates: PhD, EdD, PsyD, DBA, MD, and JD.

Ratings were provided by 184 priests, 73 deacons, and 95 directors of religious education (69 lay, 26 sisters). The DMin carried the least prestige with priests and the most with religious educators, particularly the sisters. In all groups, the DMin fared best on prestige when compared to the professional doctorates (DBA, EdD, PsyD) and worst relative to the traditional degrees (MD, JD, and PhD). When submitted to a cluster analysis, three groups emerged, corresponding to negative (46 percent), neutral (38 percent), and positive (16 percent) impressions of the prestige of the DMin. The majority of the priests (44 percent) were in the negative cluster whereas the largest proportion of deacons (45 percent) and most lay religious educators (71 percent) fell into the neutral cluster. In contrast, the largest proportion of the religious educators who were sisters by background went into the positive cluster (40 percent). With the exception of the sisters, the percentage of each group falling into the positive cluster was quite small and approximately the same size across the remaining three groups (16 percent, 15 percent, and 13 percent). A discriminant analysis of the clusters identified two discriminating functions; the primary function involved perceptions of the DMin relative to the traditional degrees (MD, JD, and PhD), whereas the very minor second function involved how the DMin is perceived in comparison to the newer practice doctorates (EdD, DBA, and PsyD).

The response rate was low.

Currently, owing to its low prestige, the DMin probably does not have a sizable potential market among Roman Catholic priests, but it may appeal more to religious educators.

The DMin may be subject to the same concerns and prejudices as raised about other professional doctorates.

Roman Catholics are a non‐traditional audience for the DMin. This degree's perceived prestige was not previously studied in this emerging market.

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the role of the doctorate as an investment in education, and to consider whose education is being invested in, how and why. We examine the role of postgraduate research within the doctorate and how this may contribute to a self-improving profession, self-improving educational institutions and self-improving education systems.

The methodology is the representation of different chapters from authors that explore the key themes that we introduce in this chapter.

We present the three main findings from a British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Doctoral Research Interest Group seminar series funded by the British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society (BELMAS). First is the progression of a systemic basis for active educational research, engaged with the mobilization of learning-based and pedagogic knowledge leadership within doctoral scholarship, learning and pedagogy. Second is the continued examination of the internationalization of purpose, structure and function in doctoral study through evidence informed leadership. Third is the provision of opportunities to explore ways in which doctoral study may facilitate educational leaders to recognize ‘minoritised’ and marginalized communities, and disrupt dominant discourses that work within patterns of ecologies that ‘pathologise’ diversity and difference.

Here, a clearly stated focus emerged during the seminar series, emphasizing how leaders engaging with doctoral learning have the opportunity to articulate generative transformative theories of human learning for a civic curriculum, and to apply this new knowledge to work for change for students’ full economic, cultural and political participation in the society.

Professional practice doctorate programs’ purpose is to prepare practitioners in the industry to lead and solve current and future complex problems with the application of research. The authors aim to argue that leadership, critical friends, and engagement of the education community together have the potential to assist in enhancing professional practice doctorate graduates’ outcomes.

From three case studies of redesign and implementations of Ed. D. programs associated with the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate, the authors discuss how distributed leadership and implementation of contemporary motivational concepts within a university empowers and incentivizes faculty to develop and enhance effectiveness of professional practice doctorates.

The concept of critical friends, those who are not invested in a specific situation, can provide objective and fresh insight and is applied as a reform strategy. Engaging the industry, that is, the education community, to further in‐context experiences for both faculty and graduate students provides not only venues for research and continual updates in the field, but also access to data, participants, and information needed for both doctoral dissertations in practice, but also faculty research. The authors conclude that the three concepts support enhancement of effectiveness of professional practice doctorate programs and accountability for graduates’ impact in the workplace.

The authors’ analyses of two professional doctorate programs generated three themes as important contributors to the (re)design, implementation, and evaluation of the Ed.D.: leaders, critical friends, and the education community. By considering the roles of leaders, critical friends, and the education, a conceptual model can be developed to support success.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) programmes currently offered by UK universities are appropriate to the needs of all stakeholders, including those of the experienced business and management professionals who enrol on them.

The paper proceeds to its conclusions by scrutinising DBA programme descriptors on UK university websites, by critically reviewing the content of recent academic papers on doctorates in the fields of business and management, and by considering current provision in the light of ongoing debates about the nature of “doctorateness” taking place in the field of doctoral education as a whole.

On the basis of a detailed review of relevant scholarly literature and of UK university website material, the paper concludes by suggesting, among other things, three possible futures for the DBA: one in which essentially the status quo prevails; a second in which all doctorates carry the award title PhD (though with two variants); and a third in which, in response to views expressed elsewhere in Europe, the current “professional doctorate” in business administration is no longer referred to as a “doctorate” but takes on a new title.

This paper is an original contribution to the debate about the value and purpose of professional doctorates (and, in particular of the DBA) to the professional development of experienced managers and to their skills in research and workplace problem solving and decision making.

Industrial doctorates have arisen in recent decades as a new form of doctoral education which has the potential to innovate the curriculum, among other things. Such programmes run in a number of countries including Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Estonia or Italy. In Portugal, industrial doctorates are very recent. The purpose of this paper is to understand whether Portuguese industrial doctorates distinguish themselves through collaboration with industry, specifically in curriculum development and delivery, or if they replicate the traditional doctorates under a new name.

Data from self-assessment reports of existing programmes submitted to the Portuguese accreditation agency and interviews with programme leaders were analysed.

The findings suggest that despite the fact that there is space for improvement in the collaboration in curriculum development and delivery, this is nonetheless a dimension which differentiates industrial doctorates. Industrial doctorates can, therefore, be “judged by their cover” because they are indeed a new category of doctoral degrees.

Although circumscribed to the Portuguese context and focussed on a particular aspect of university–industry collaboration, the paper contributes to further knowledge on industrial doctorates, a topic on which research is still scarce.

Accounting academics in the South African system understand their primary responsibility to be the teaching of prospective Chartered Accountants (CAs) rather than the advancement of knowledge through research. The purpose of this study is to determine what factors motivate accounting academics who are CAs to obtain doctorates in an environment dominated by the profession, where promotion is possible to Full Professor without a Doctorate but not without the professional qualification of CA. And did these doctoral CAs face challenges on their journey, such as resistance from colleagues?

A total of 22 academic CAs with doctorates and 18 academic CAs studying towards doctorates were surveyed to gain a deeper understanding of who they are, what their motivations were for undertaking the doctorate journey and what they experienced.

The main finding of this study is that the culture of accounting departments in South Africa is beginning to shift from being teaching orientated towards being more research orientated. The CAs are pursuing doctorates for the purpose of career progression and for intrinsic personal reasons. The main challenges that they faced on their journey were finding the time for family and a social life and a lack of support from colleagues and their institution. However, support seems to be improving.

The change to a research-orientated culture in South African departments of accounting, as envisioned by Van der Schyf (2008), is only now starting to take place. These CAs with doctorates provide evidence of that change.

The value of this study is to provide accounting academics and the profession with a better understanding of, and a greater sensitivity to, accounting academics operating under the influence of the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA). The study also adds to the limited amount of literature on the motives and experiences of doctoral students, especially accounting doctoral students.

Since its inception at Harvard in 1921, the Doctorate in Education (EdD) has been a degree fraught with confusion as to its purpose and distinction from the PhD. In response to this, the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED), a collaborative project consisting of 80+ schools of education located in the United States, Canada, and New Zealand were established to undertake a critical examination of the EdD and develop it into the degree of choice for educators who want to generate knowledge and scholarship about practice or related policies and steward the education profession. However, programmatic changes in higher education can bring both benefits and challenges (Levine, 2005). This chapter explains: the origins of the education doctorate; how CPED as a network of partners has changed the EdD; the use of bi-annual Convenings as spaces for this work; CPED’s three phases of membership that have built the network; CPED’s path forward.

The purpose of this paper is related to how students and academics in a business school perceive the doctor of business administration (DBA) in terms of its purpose and value compared to that of the conventional PhD.

The research methodology involved a two-stage approach in which a pilot questionnaire and short interviews with 37 students was followed by a second questionnaire to 21 academics employed at a business school at a post-1992 English university.

The findings suggest that although the DBA is valued as means to develop professional knowledge and expertise, the PhD remains the premier choice for those who wish to embark on an academic career. The DBA does, however, also represents a development of work-based learning in higher education.

The research was undertaken at one post-1992 university business school, further research should look to expand the sample size and include a variety of business schools from both pre- and post-1992 universities in England.

The paper does offer a justification for the continued development of the DBA and professional doctorates in general in terms of the development of work-based learning in higher education.