Seeking Doctorate in National Security or Public Policy

[sanantone]

National security is international relations focused on war, espionage, weapons proliferation, and terrorism issues. Alternatives to national security would be international relations, global security, security studies, international security, international affairs, diplomacy, and potentially political science depending on the available electives or concentrations. Public policy may or may not have an international focus. Homeland security is different from national security. Homeland security is more focused on tactics to protect the homeland and is often combined with emergency management. National security and all its variations are more focused on international relations, foreign policy, and studying the ideologies behind foreign terrorist groups.

It doesn't get much cheaper than Liberty University with the first responder discount. There's also the American Military University.

AMU is too expensive and likely would be frowned upon given my goal of full time academia.

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@FireMedic_Philosopher, that's a good introduction post but it's missing a few details of your variables, it's better to provide a greater overview of your situation by filling in the addendum and template details, a very simple and short one like this here, I mentioned this to someone asking for a Masters degree in this thread: https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...#pid410308

BTW, would a different Doctorate work for you instead of National Security or Public Policy? The reason is, again, without your details, we don't know what can and can't transfer over.  One of the institutions you mentioned, Liberty allows up to 50% transfer, but the subjects taught at the doctoral level is going to be hard to find 'cheap' elsewhere... Hmm, something to think about.

To answer your core question as succinctly as I can, I do not have any doctoral credits yet complete. Liberty has led me to believe (please correct me if I am wrong) that masters level credits would only transfer in towards a master's degree. They indicated that I could complete an executive level public policy certificate in-house and transfer those credits toward a Liberty PhD, but those certificates do not qualify for the first responder discount.

Liberty University would also be frowned upon depending on which direction you go. If you go more toward the homeland security, criminal justice, and emergency management direction, then Liberty will be fine. If you go more toward political science and international relations, then Liberty University might hurt you because of their entanglement with Christian fundamentalism and far right politics.