South College DBA Program (IT Specialization) - Progress Tracker

[SteveFoerster]

Perhaps someday WGU will offer doctoral programs....

Doubtful. I love WGU, but their mission is to offer degrees that lead to real jobs. Doctorates, for the most part, many times have a zero or negative ROI. I'd love for them to offer a DBA, EdD, or something along those lines, but they'd have to change thier model dramatically to do it effectively.

Alas, I know you're right.

[wiresandscreens]

Hey everyone, I wanted to come back and provide an update on my progress at South College.

TLDR: I am 1 assignment away from completing the program. This is just waiting on my capstone defense with my chair and other faculty member and then I am done with the program. This will put my completion at 6.5 months conservatively.

I am now just waiting for my chair to schedule my capstone defense and then I'm done with the program. Unfortunately, due to slow grading in the course prior to the capstone course, it added around 3 months out of my 6 month term. While they were following policies on grading times, it is the single factor that led to this taking me more than 1 term.

I may be the first person to graduate from the capstone option (although I can't confirm this) and the capstone course itself is rigorous and demanding. Each chapter (out of 4 total) requires a significant amount of work to complete and my Chairs feedback was both relevant and detailed. On weekends it wasn't uncommon to dedicate 8-16 hours over two days just on a single chapter.

While I can't comment on specifics of my capstone until I'm done with the course, it totals around 250 pages and is something I feel the course itself prepared me well to write. Ive spent around a month writing the capstone and making revisions based on my Chairs feedback and it was given a final pass around 4 days ago. This left the capstone defense presentation to be made after. This presentation only took a day to do, but it was an effort to condense 250 pages into a 30 minute presentation.

While I have no information on the actual defense until I get it scheduled and complete it, I'm conservatively putting completion of this degree at 6.5 months in total for me. If grading followed WGU standards, this would have been around 3-4 months in total. I understand the school has had a large influx of students into these CBE programs so the delays on grading are not a surprise, just be aware going in.

I also can't provide insight on the capstone vs dissertation route as I have only worked on a capstone, but at around 250 pages, don't consider the capstone an easy way out. My literature synthesis alone is made up of over 70 sources and comprises over 80 pages, not including the rest of the chapter. The remainder of the paper is much the same, and by following the capstone course assignment guidelines, it turned into a legitimate academic paper that is adding to the body of knowledge on my topic.

I'll be sure to provide a final update once my actual defense is completed, but it's at the finish line and I'm glad to have completed this at an accelerated pace.