European Professional Doctorate

[Unlucky]

Hello everyone,

I hope all is doing well. I would be grateful if you kindly could recommend some professional doctoral programs in leadership or law for me. My needs for the study is merely knowledge gaps and research practice, so I don’t care much about accreditations or whether it’s a Titulo Propio certificate, as long as the institution has some legal incorporation and/or granting power to have some assurance of program quality.

Since the program would have no ROI whatsoever (I don’t even plan to have it listed on my CV), I prefer European education because it is usually much cheaper than American education (preferably less than EUR 4000).

I know of a Czech school, Cosmopolitan Institute of Education, that seems to have an interesting LLD program. I tried to reach out to them multiple times through email, but I never heard back from them. Other Polish school, by the name of Collegium Humanum, has a similar program with a price tag of PLN 9900 (according to their Polish website) which translates to  EUR 2145. However, when I contacted them and they realized I’m not Polish, they said the price is EUR +8000. I’m not sure if manipulating the price based on one’s country of origin is acceptable internationally, but for me it is a big no. 

Please advise. 

Thank you,

[rachel83az]

Generally speaking, you're going to run into local vs. international pricing at most universities, especially within the EU. US universities also do it and, in some cases it's really extreme. For universities within the EU, you may be able to find programs that are free to EU citizens but that cost several thousand to everyone else. It's because tax dollars subsidize the costs. If you're not a resident of the country or countries in question, you pay more.

That said, what kind of degree are you looking for? Just LLD or what? Your post isn't very clear.

[Tomas]

My needs for the study is merely knowledge gaps and research practice, so I don’t care much about accreditations or whether it’s a Titulo Propio certificate, as long as the institution has some legal incorporation and/or granting power to have some assurance of program quality.

Not sure what you mean by "some legal incorporation", also not caring about accreditations yet wanting some assurance of program quality seems a bit contradictory to me.
CIE is legally incorporated as a limited liability company. I'm almost sure there is nothing that could be named "granting power" with them, I even doubt presence of any assurance of program quality.  Basically it's a business selling courses on anything they can that doesn't require accreditation in Czech. People behind it have connection to FVES (Czech "branch" of Jagiellonian College in Toruń), maybe that's where most of their degrees are from.
Collegium Humanum at least is a private university (which doesn't mean their degrees like LLD LLM are accredited, I'd bet they are offering it as professional education).

[bjcheung77]

Basically, for myself, I'm planning to do the double doctoral degree here, it might be something you're interested in especially if you understand Spanish: https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...#pid399607

[stevennguyen15691]

Basically, for myself, I'm planning to do the double doctoral degree here, it might be something you're interested in especially if you understand Spanish: https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...#pid399607

I asked the school and they said the thesis must be written in Spanish but I don't know Spanish

[Unlucky]

Generally speaking, you're going to run into local vs. international pricing at most universities, especially within the EU. US universities also do it and, in some cases it's really extreme.  For universities within the EU, you may be able to find programs that are free to EU citizens but that cost several thousand to everyone else. It's because tax dollars subsidize the costs. If you're not a resident of the country or countries in question, you pay more.

That said, what kind of degree are you looking for? Just LLD or what? Your post isn't very clear.

Thank you for your reply. I completely understand your point of view, especially when it comes to tax payers, but at least in the US, they do it in a fair manner. They have clear in-state and out-of-the-state tuition fees visible to everyone to see. Everybody from outside of the particular state will pay the same listed price.

Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case in Europe. Some (shady) schools will charge you based on where you’re personally from. For example, if they think you’re from a wealthy Middle Eastern country like the UAE, they will charge you for a hefty price that is sometimes 4 times higher than the usual out-of-state fees. I had a similar encounter with FVES mentioned by Thomas, despite the fact that I have nothing to with the Emirates. They tried to charge me $10k for a program that I know from various online sources it doesn’t cost more than $2.5k. Just because they confused my name for someone they think is from the UAE. This, to me, is just immoral and unethical. And the solution is simply to have visible prices for everyone to see like in the US; i.e., prices for citizens and prices for internationals.

Charging for a price based on what they think your income is can be perceived as a discriminatory behavior, which should not have a place in educational institutions. 

Thank you,

---

My needs for the study is merely knowledge gaps and research practice, so I don’t care much about accreditations or whether it’s a Titulo Propio certificate, as long as the institution has some legal incorporation and/or granting power to have some assurance of program quality.

Not sure what you mean by "some legal incorporation", also not caring about accreditations yet wanting some assurance of program quality seems a bit contradictory to me.
CIE is legally incorporated as a limited liability company. I'm almost sure there is nothing that could be named "granting power" with them, I even doubt presence of any assurance of program quality.  Basically it's a business  selling courses on anything they can that doesn't require accreditation in Czech. People behind it have connection to FVES (Czech "branch" of Jagiellonian College in Toruń), maybe that's where most of their degrees are from.
Collegium Humanum at least is a private university (which doesn't mean their degrees like LLD LLM are accredited, I'd bet they are offering it as professional education).

I seek education primarily for personal development, knowledge, and fulfillment. By “legal incorporation,” I mean the institution must be lawfully authorized to offer education within its own country and should not be a “degree mill.” My indifference towards accreditations is merely to broaden the scope of suggestions and recommendations, without confining them to cost-prohibitive RA, triple business accreditation, or Ivy League institutions.

To my understanding, countries like France and Switzerland permit private schools to operate legally with certain government approvals, without necessitating accreditations. While these schools may not have the same recognition as state-recognized public institutions, it does not inherently imply inferior education quality, particularly for someone like me who does not intend to leverage the certification professionally. However, institutions in France and Switzerland exceed my budget.

Per their websites, Czech CIE is associated with the Slovak St. Elizabeth College of Health and Social Work, and Czech FVES is affiliated with the Polish Akademia Jagiellońska. I’ve mentioned both schools in my initial post and my first reply, respectively.

[Tomas]

I seek education primarily for personal development, knowledge, and fulfillment. By “legal incorporation,” I mean the institution must be lawfully authorized to offer education within its own country and should not be a “degree mill.” My indifference towards accreditations is merely to broaden the scope of suggestions and recommendations, without confining them to cost-prohibitive RA, triple business accreditation, or Ivy League institutions.

To my understanding, countries like France and Switzerland permit private schools to operate legally with certain government approvals, without necessitating accreditations. While these schools may not have the same recognition as state-recognized public institutions, it does not inherently imply inferior education quality, particularly for someone like me who does not intend to leverage the certification professionally. However, institutions in France and Switzerland exceed my budget.

Per their websites, Czech CIE is associated with the Slovak St. Elizabeth College of Health and Social Work, and Czech FVES is affiliated with the Polish Akademia Jagiellońska. I’ve mentioned both schools in my initial post and my first reply, respectively.

I can only speak about Czech republic. Here, private universities are OK.
If CIE has any kind of cooperation with mentioned college, it's not an official one - it's not listed in ministry of education database. 
That Slovak college alone (not with CIE) is approved to operate in Czech republic, they offer some social work, missionary work and theological degrees. (They offer those in cooperation with different institute however, not with CIE.)
CIE has business license to provide educational courses - license that anyone can get. No evidence of anything more.

FVES Ltd. on the other hand is completely in legal zone, eventhough the Polish uni only owns 20%, it's officially their faculty here.

Now, if you want to get LLD, that's a law degree. That Slovak college doesn't seem to offer any accredited law related degrees at all. 
Neither FVES in Czech republic, it's "economic faculty" and they have degrees in public administration, bee keeping, real estate brokering.
So I wonder why they offer doctorate in law and where they get professors from.
Those LLM, LLD, etc. degrees are offered completely outside of what they are locally accredited for, it's a business.
Their "university status" is only relevant for accredited degrees, not for any business offerings they have outside of that.
Here, LLM, LLD, etc., means nothing. I can start offering LLD degrees today if I wanted to, anyone can start business teaching those degrees here. They don't fall under any regulations, not part of academic world here.


On a sidenote, I have checked FVES MBA (same thing as LLM etc., anyone can offer MBA here) and it's accrediated by "American Association for Higher Education and Accreditation", with United Nations stamp no less! I wonder why officially accredited Uni in Poland would fall that down to boast by being accredited by an institution known for "accrediting" degree mills.

From my point of view, it's necessary to look at it from the point of view that these companies often run two lines of business:
- higher education provided in accordance with local accreditation
- side business unrelated to the accredited higher education activity (MBA, LLD,...)

[sarahmac]

Netherlands and Germany doctoral study is free for everyone ... you are an "independent" or "external" candidate. The difficult part is finding someone to supervise you. In that case maybe they want you to visit the campus every now and then, but there is no reason it can't be at a distance.

If you want, you can also just get a job as a Doktorand *in* the Netherlands or Germany. Of course, you must have a masters. But then you are paid to do the PhD. Usually, it's 3.8-4.2 k a month since it's on a government public payscale. It is a fulltime research job. I am pretty sure the Nordics also work this way. I know Norway does. This "paying for a PhD thing" is a very US thing.

[Tomas]

Same in Czech republic, real doctoral study is free (not completely sure about non-residents though). I forgot to mention, regarding law, recognized upper level titles in law behind masters are PhD (same as PhD everywhere else), and JUDr. JUDr is "small doctorate", mostly useless (not required for anything, historical relict), but one can submit a dissertation and pay fee to get one. It's pretty popular among lawyers, but not equivalent to PhD, neither any credits from JUDr that could be used towards PhD here.

[bjcheung77]

Basically, for myself, I'm planning to do the double doctoral degree here, it might be something you're interested in especially if you understand Spanish: https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...#pid399607

I asked the school and they said the thesis must be written in Spanish but I don't know Spanish

That's where DeepL/Google Translate and typing everything in English then doing a translation would possibly work... I would get a Spanish friend to review or read your thesis though just to make sure it doesn't have grammatical errors...