The roots of the doctorate run deep, going back to the teachers of the early church – the apostles. Since these early days, the doctorate has become a lofty and long-established educational standard. Our understanding of doctorates as a truly lofty and worthy qualification is largely to do with the complexity of the doctoral study, as well as the longstanding tradition of respect for wisdom.
Traditionally, doctorates have been undertaken through research and teaching. They are typically either undertaken in order to seek a career in academia or in medical practice. In recent years, however, a new form of doctorate has emerged. Professional doctorates are not necessarily research-based (in which the student has to research and defend a novel thesis) but are more geared towards the development of a high degree of professional skill within a particular field.
Professional doctorates exist because of the complexity of fields such as clinical psychology, business administration, education, nursing, and engineering. Developing a deep knowledge of these fields does not necessarily involve the defense of a novel thesis but a thorough and in-depth exploration of the existing subject. You’ll be expected to gear your research towards the practical implementation of innovative ideas.
Professional doctorates are far more career-orientated than conventional Ph.D. or DPHIL qualifications. Geared towards advancing the student’s position in an industry, they often claim to be more vocational and immediately useful than the more abstract and nebulous conventional doctorate qualifications. It could be said that they are also quite limiting for those who change their mind about their chosen field as you leave yourself with fewer options or scope for change.
There is no real standard definition that allows us to easily surmise what a professional Doctorate might be. There is a variance between subjects, nations, and institutions. Their common feature is their career orientated learning structure. The first professional doctorate was offered by Harvard University in 1921 in the field of education. Since then, professional doctorates have diversified and proliferated to cover many different niches. Professional doctorates are extremely demanding and require that you have a preexisting passion for the improvement of your field. Be ready to have your assumptions challenged and your research methods interrogated. From this tough academic environment, the doctoral student develops a highly in-depth knowledge of their field and a network of fellow innovators with which they are able to collaborate. Here are some of the most useful kinds of professional doctorate being made available by institutions today.
The Doctorate of Education
The first officially recognized professional doctorate to be offered in the United States, the subsequent proliferation of Doctorates in Education reflects the enormous complexity of the educational industry.
The development of educational roadmaps and improvement strategies necessitates a very in-depth knowledge of social, economic, political, and demographic research methods. A doctorate in education fosters these research methods with the aim of providing the student with the tools they need to implement their new research methods in improving education practically.
The doctorate is especially useful if you already have experience in teaching but wish to run a school. It is equally useful if you wish to enter the complex field of educational policy or consultancy. You’ll need to really understand the problems facing educators today and model the likely problems that they will face in the future. For obvious reasons, education is a very forward-thinking field, and you will have to develop ‘future-proofing’ skills that allow institutions to trust you for your guidance on what might lie in store for them.
Working in the higher echelons of education is extremely challenging, and this doctorate provides you with the tools to do so effectively.
The Doctorate of Clinical Psychology
This professional doctorate is largely undertaken in the United Kingdom, where it is a necessary qualification if you wish to become a registered practice clinical psychologist with the National Health Service.
The course contains both clinical and research components. You’ll be expected to build upon your preexisting medical knowledge and develop a wide range of skills relating to the diagnosis and treatment of illnesses involving the brain. It is extremely challenging work but prepares you well for the equally challenging work of being a practicing psychologist.
You’ll be expected to be a keen researcher in the field of neuroscience and to be able to apply your research to real-world situations. Because this doctorate is entirely focused on a career path within the health service, extra funding is available to potential students through the UK government. The UK is suffering an unprecedented mental health crisis and desperately needs to expand its provision for clinical psychological treatment. As a practicing clinical psychologist, you will be on the front line, helping to hopefully pull the country out of a very real struggle for health.
As a fully qualified clinical psychologist, you will also have the opportunity to open a private practice or enter the world of sports psychology, depending upon your chosen specialization. Career paths in psychology are very deep and can eventually lead to work developing governmental policy.
The Doctorate in Business Administration
The master of business administration or MBA is an extremely popular qualification. For those students who wish to take their business education to the next level, doctorate programs have been developed and offered by some of the world’s top business schools. Oxford, Harvard, and Yale all offer doctorates in this field. Applicants are typically required to have lots of previous business leadership experience before they consider these courses.
One of the most useful aspects of these doctorates is the opportunities that they provide for networking and business innovation. Some amazing partnerships have sprung up during study for business administration doctorates. You’ll be interacting with fellow leaders and executives, often in a very diverse and international cohort. This provides wonderful opportunities to collaborate with leaders that you might not have been able to outside of education. Most Doctorates of Business Administration also involve some overseas travel, allowing students to take a step back and view the business world as a global entity.
These doctorates suit people who are already familiar with the executive world and wish to climb the corporate ladder right to the very top through making positive impacts and developing innovative business strategies. They can be absolutely invaluable for people wishing to start a successful business venture. Throughout the course, start-up innovators will learn how to negotiate the complex world of high echelon business, utilize psychology and understanding to advance their aims, and read and grow within markets.
The Doctorate in Nursing Practice
Nursing has been evolving and diversifying since ancient times when the deaconess Phoebe was allegedly sent by St. Paul to Rome in order to care for the sick. Nurses have slowly taken up more and more complex roles in society, including being the guardians of public health and the administrators of a huge amount of healthcare worldwide. Individual nurses have revolutionized healthcare systems. Florence Nightingale is a household name because she used her position as a nurse to innovate – creating hospital systems that prevented the spread of cholera and earning herself the nickname ‘the angel of Crimea’ for her pioneering work during the terrible Crimean war.
In more modern times, nurses – especially senior nurses – have been expected to upskill and innovate. Far from being passive careers, competent nurses are taking leading roles in healthcare. Accordingly, nursing education has evolved. First offered in 1979, the doctorate in nursing practice (or DNP for short) offers senior nurses the chance to expand upon and innovate within their specific nursing field. We stand at an absolutely crucial time in the history of healthcare when innovation is desperately needed in order to help drag the human race out of the pandemic.
So, why get a DNP in nursing? The professional development that it provides is absolutely vast. You’ll be learning from and collaborating with some of the most senior nurses in the world and learning to integrate big picture thinking into the care of individuals. Nursing is an incredibly deep career path, with many vital fields contained within. A doctorate in nursing practice allows you to advance in your professional practice to the stage where you are able to make real and lasting changes to thousands of lives. It is a worthwhile qualification not only for the participant but for all of the people that the participant will be empowered to help in the future.
The Doctorate in Health and Social Care
Public health is an increasingly pressing concern. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed some serious inequalities and inconsistencies in the way that ill and vulnerable people are cared for. More and more, innovation is being sought in the fields of health and social care as a symbiotic pairing. Doctorates in health and social care are aimed towards senior officials working in the field who wish to develop innovative research and application methods to improve public health.
There are many pressing issues in health and social care that demand attention. Funding, geographic inequality, demographic inequality, and national emergencies all require innovation within the health and social care field. Studying for a doctorate in health and social care requires that you dive head first into these issues with the aim of developing models to help solve them. It is extremely complex work that requires a deep understanding of politics, the law, funding schemes, and health and social problems facing the nation today.
Candidates are expected to engage with policy, practice, and social context in order to improve their practice. It is the emphasis on practice that makes this doctorate so useful. You’ll be researching at the highest level, but all the while applying it to the real life situations which you have experience as a professional. When you have completed your doctorate, you’ll be expected to bring your new knowledge and research to bear in the real world, and will be in extremely high demand if you can do so.
The Professional Doctorate in Law
Many people with unrelated degrees wish to study law with the aim of switching careers. To study a full-time law degree is an extremely time-consuming occupation and will often touch upon skills a postgraduate may already have learned. A professional doctorate in law is an educational program aimed at giving experienced students the tools they need to practice law. This, however, is not the usual path that is taken to this qualification.
The professional doctorate in law is more often marketed towards people either already working in the legal field or whose existing professional life demands that they improve their knowledge of the law. If, for instance, you wish to serve as a high ranking officer in the military, a Professional Doctorate in Military Law will allow you to negotiate the complexities of military leadership with an in-depth knowledge of the complex laws that govern it.
The professional doctorate in law is similarly useful when you wish to pursue a career as a naval paralegal, international human rights, or heritage administration. In heritage administration, a very in-depth knowledge of the law is essential if you want to work with and around the complicated legal frameworks that govern the alteration of the built environment. Ownership and conservation ethics can become foggy zones, indeed, unless you have an in-depth understanding of the law. The international organization UNESCO regularly updates its list of laws pertaining to heritage, and as you can see, it can get pretty complicated pretty quickly. It is a fast-moving legal environment that a doctorate can help you prepare for properly.
If you work within a large organization such as the military, the professional doctorate in law is occasionally funded through your employer. This is a relatively rare occurrence, but there are great incentives for large organizations to train their most talented staff in an understanding of the law. Wages for those working in legal professions are very high, so this doctorate offers good value for money if you work hard, no matter how you receive your funding.
