I posted something like the following at SDA but thought it worth a repost here for posterity.
I read through Jill Biden's Ed.D thesis. Short version: she's no Doctor. She's probably not even a Master.
Some facts:
- Jill's actual content (introduction up to but not including references) is 80 pages, double-spaced. Interestingly, her table of contents doesn’t properly line up with the page count, but whatever.
- Typical page (her introduction) is about 250 words, so that’s about a 20,000 word thesis excluding references and appendices.
- a PhD thesis in the arts typically has a 80K upper word limit, Masters a 60K upper word limit. Good ones are probably half that, maybe a bit more. So Jill has written a bit more than half of a typical Masters thesis.
- the text is significantly bulked out with e.g. material that seems like what you'd find in a Delaware Tech+Community College brochure, the full text of a student survey, and a faculty interview that should probably have been relegated to an appendix.
- the thesis has 39 references by my count, which is what you’d expect from a medium length conference / journal paper. A Masters thesis should have more than that. A doctorate (which is supposed to advance the state of research) should have a lot more.
- she has a boring writing style (this is technically an opinion, but I’m right) and it’s hard to figure out what she’s trying to argue. Her conclusions seem rather trite.
Opinion: if I was one of the people who signed off on this (pages 3 and 4) I would be very quiet about it if someone at a party started spouting off that Jill Biden deserves to be called “Doctor”. For the record, these are:
- Barbara Curry, Ed.D. (Professor in charge of dissertation (executive position paper)
- James Broomall, Ed.D. Member of dissertation committee (executive position paper)
- Frances Leach, Ed.D. Member of dissertation committee (executive position paper)
- Eugene Matusov, Ph.D. Member of dissertation committee (executive position paper)
