> but the qualification (from whichever accredited university) would open up a lot of opportunities

I'd caution about this - if you think you can apply to jobs requiring a PhD I would think that when you apply the first thing they're going to do is to ask you who your advisor was and what you did.

Unlike a bachelors just having a PhD isn't worth much - they will want to know what you actually achieved. If you have a PhD on paper but didn't really achieve much they're going to say 'huh but I've never seen your work in the community?'

> from whichever accredited university

I'd say the single most important thing on a PhD is where you did it and who your advisor was, so I would caution about this as well.

Having said all that, I did all my PhD remotely, and I did it while working mostly full-time for half of it, and while buying a house and building a family and serving part-time in the military on top of all that, so it can be combined with other things.

I have heard exactly the opposite from people who work in the administrative side of academia. If your future job prospects are research-based, sure it matters. But if you just need to hold a doctorate to apply to be a president of a local college, or to get a leg up on a superintendent job at a school district? Any doctorate is fine.

> But if you just need to hold a doctorate to apply to be a president of a local college, or to get a leg up on a superintendent job at a school district?

Ok I'd never heard of such of thing.

This is the entire purpose of the Ed.D. degree, as a box ticking exercise for promotion purposes. A JD will work as well, and that doesn’t even have the pretense of being a research doctorate the Ed.D. does.

Totally agree. This is definitely the case for places where the PhD actually matters. Except for a large number of jobs in NY (finance) and in DC (government), it is just a binary flag used to whittle down the candidate pool. In Government it is especially bad as some of these credentials are used for pay increases.

Just out of curiosity, who is offering remote PhD’s? The only online PhD’s I’ve ever seen have been in nursing related fields.

I did a regular PhD just didn’t ever go into the office. (I did at the start for a few weeks and did every now and again.)

And I guess every PhD is now a remote PhD for at least the next year?

Lots of schools, and not just in Nursing. Google “remote phd”

I did mine based far from the University (a very good one) but travelling down every few months to meet with my supervisors. I learnt tons, and it has helped my career. It also meant a lot of work over 6 years (part time). Time well spent! I effectively swapped TV and movies for statistics, and have no regrets. Over the period we had 2 kids.

You could probably do it faster / easier with a pro forma type place, but it would be a debasement of standards - it might tick a box but you probably wouldn't learn the skills. What I really like about the author's post is that they are detailing it all, and it is about getting a formal qualification to recognise the knowledge they have.

A PhD is about your research and publishing far more than your actual degree. I can't see how an online doctorate would work with today's remote learning options so would not imagine it would have much value

I totally see this viewpoint for Tech/Bio/etc R&D and teaching...but I'd love to hear whether this viewpoint applies at organizations which uses PhDs just as an entry filter.

So many people I've worked with both in Gov/Intel/Finance had random PhDs.