universityworldnews.com | Original Article | by Ami Zusman

In the past 10 to 15 years, new kinds of doctorate degrees – in fields that had never had doctorates before – have burst onto the higher education scene in the United States. These new ‘professional practice doctorate’, or PPD, degrees have emerged in at least a dozen fields, ranging from physical therapy to bioethics.

Some of these newly created doctorate degrees are now required for a person to enter a professional practice. In other fields, although they are not (or not yet) required, these doctorates have become the normative degree.

Nor is this just a US phenomenon: new professional doctorate degrees have been created and programmes for them are growing rapidly in Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and elsewhere.

Professional practice doctorates differ from PhDs in several ways; most are shorter than PhDs – in some cases, only slightly longer than the masters programmes they replace. In the US, most do not require original research, but they do include a clinical component. Read More...