I'm doing both! Finishing a Doctorate in Business Administration right now (DBA) and am moving toward a combined MD/PhD program... 3 doctorates in 10 years isn't too bad!
Currently a student at Birkbeck in my second year. Would be great to have a video of a Professor/Reader/Senior Lecturer go through their journey in academia from their Bachelor’s degree to where they are now. I’m interested to know their personal stories and how they knew they wanted to pursue a PhD and all the decisions they had to face, obstacle they had to overcome, the wholistic experience and thoughts in hind sight.
The advantage of professional doctorate...it's expand the candidate knowledge areas and train them to be scientifically ready to perform both basis and applied research.
edwong3 My congratulations. You have accomplished much. Be that as it may, it is not ethical for you to call yourself doctor. Placing the D. Min. after your name is perfectly acceptable. Best of luck to you.
edwong3 I respect your opinion, I really do. And I respect your taking the time, energy and I'm sure no little expense to earn your degree. By the way, you are absolutely right about medical doctors. Maybe more right than you think. The MD degree is a rather late development, academically. Earlier, about 100-150 years ago, the degree was not the MD but a masters in medicine degree. Then, only after the medical school graduate did further study, not the residency as there is to day but another more academic program, did they get the MD. Relatively few ever got that degree. It was considered academic, not professional, and was not needed to actually practice medicine. With the beginning of residency programs as medicine got more specialized, the physicians began to push for the MD for all medical school graduates. Even so, technically, the MD is not by any means the equivalent academically to the PhD as there is no research dissertation, and there is no purely abstract academic research--research that has little to no relevance to everyday medicine. The same for lawyers. The JD is not even close to a doctoral degree. Not even close. The program is only 3 years, there is no dissertation on abstract legal theory. It's all practical to pass the bar. The degree originally was a bachelors of law. Then the lawyers got jealous of the physicians and cooked up the JD. I'm not joking at all, that is really how the JD came about. As for law, there is a graduate law degree called the LL.M. the masters of law. It's usually only one year. There is another law degree called the S.J.D, or doctor of juridical science. It's not a real doctorate either, being run by the law schools and not the university as a proper PhD is. They are not supposed to call themselves doctors, and I've had words with a few that did. Only two schools to my knowledge give the full fledged PhD in law. The University of Washington and Yale. After I got my JD, I got my LL.M in Asian and Comparative Law, and several years later was granted the PhD. I constantly kid by brothers and sisters who are MDs I'm the only real doctor in the family, and they take it good in good fun. Some egotistical physicians, let's use the proper term, think the Roman god of medicine descended from Olympus and anointed them by hitting them over their heads with the caduceus and turning the MD into "minor deity". My brothers and sisters only call themselves doctors in professional settings. As for me, only rarely will I insist on being addressed as doctor. Or professor. It can confuse people as most will automatically assume one is a physician. So, don't take the title too seriously. Being an educated, learned person, as you clearly are, is more than enough.
edwong3 Thank you. By the way, you are right about European medical degrees. You obviously did well in your studies, and from what little I know of your area, it is a difficult discipline. I have a nephew who has the same degree you have, and it can be difficult for me to follow his learned conversations. Please relax, and enjoy yourself. I'm no longer teaching, and just being a "learned lawyer" as my PhD committee chair called me when he learned I had retired, is more than enough. What you know about yourself is more important then what others think about you. Let me tell you an interesting story about my mother, a physician. She was over 80 years old at the time. We were in a grocery store check out line in Palm Springs, California. . My mother was frumpily dressed in old comfortable clothes she always wore, unfashionable and simple. There was a woman in front of us in full Palm Springs Entitled Woman mode, excessively high heels, flashy jewelry, obvious breast augmentation, and made up to the hilt. She was acting arrogant and demanding, making a scene about what I can't recall. She looked at my mother with distain, down her obviously re-worked nose. My mother and I looked at each other and began to laugh quietly. Both of us thought that fashion diva, who likely just graduated from high school, would never believe the dowdy old lady was one of the first medical school graduates in the country. Take care.