PhD Organization & Management/General Business

Having received a Ph. D. from Capella in June 2009, I have had time to reflect on the experience and I must say it is worthwhile. Since then I have been published in two double-blind peer reviewed Journals and am awaiting decisions on three more. The dissertation experience for me was excellent. My Mentor told me quite early on that a student must choose wisely and the Mentor must be intimately familiar with the process. They must also be timely. Fortunately, my Mentor was. The coursework took two and a half years and was more rigorous than any traditional university that I have attended or taught. My dissertation process lasted 8 months, start to finish. I would heartily recommend Capella to anyone attempting the on-line experience.

I will probably have to drop out of my graduate program at Capella now because my employer, Lockheed-Martin, now requires "ABET or AACSB" accreditation.  I sure hope they'll meet that requirement soon!  It also will help to defuse some of the anti-online education rhetoric.

To the oct 2 2007 post, I am an online teacher at 2 institutions and online instructors call themselves facilitators to reflect the androgynous model of learning, as opposed to the "the professor knows all you sit down and absorb my knowledge" model.  
I am also a Capella PhD student.  The classes were better than a neuroscience program I was in at ISU prior to transferring when my wife began medical residency, and we had our first son.  The statistics is worlds better than either U of IL, or ISU's...I now love stats and ran the stats for my wife's final residency research project.  Capella teaches from a problem based learnign approach, much better than the "memorize this formula and maybe we will try to apply it" approach of traditional schools.

However, I am now in the final stages of my actual research and waiting..Capella takes the army's "Hurry up and wait" to a whole new level.  I knew my project at my first colloquium, researched it for two years, wrote a comps question on it, used it for my adv res methods class MRF form.  It took me 4 months to get approval for the MRF section 1, the precursor to the IRB.  The psychology chair returned the first draft in August because it used 5th edition APA, not 6th.  Heck my university had not even ordered the 6th edition yet, and Capella wouldnt switch over until a month and a half later in October.  finally the chair approved the 3rd revision in mid december, and this should be the easy step.  My entire IRB approval for Bradley University took 3 weeks, Capella will take about 9 months if I am lucky.  I opened my schedule so that I could potentially work 30 hours a week on my research this fall, what a waste, it takes me 3 hours to fix changes in the revisions and 3 weeks to hear back from the chair or committee for each step (my mentor rules though, I get her revisions within 4-5 days!).  
So you invest yourself in the Capella program, 2 years of great classes, then they kill you on dragging out the dissertation.  I could have been done with my research and writing my Chapters 4 and 5 (results and conclusions) over Christmas break.  Instead I am waiting to get the methodology review form accepted, and I have been told the Capella IRB(the final step) is worse.
Be aware, if you are organized, and driven, you will be frustrated.  If you want to take 2 years preparing and writing up your dissertation (not including classes) then Capella is right for you.  If you have the possibility, the drive, and the organization to be done with your actual dissertation process in a year, look somewhere else(my data collection will actually take me 40 hours of in lab work).
I love my project, be realistically I am paying for 2-3 semesters that I should not have to (at over $2000 each).  I may actually be done with my next two research projects at Bradley by the time I get my dissertation completed..the equipment is just sitting in a lab right now waiting.