There is a doctorate program I’m interested in at the University of Buckingham. Couple issues though considering I’m American.
What is it’s reputation? It is a private non-profit university which seems to be rare in the UK so is that something that should be concerned with?. Googling the school seems to have reviews all over the place so it would be nice ti get some real-life Brit-dopers’ opinions.
Would the degree be accepted in the US equivalent to a real accredited doctoral degree here in the US? All I was told by my employer was to get the degree and THEN send it in to NACES for evaluation. That seems backwards to me and I don’t want to get a degree that doesn’t count in the US. Does anyone in the US know if you can ask NACES ahead of time what a degree will evaluate as?
It is unusual here as it receives no public funding - more like an Ameican uni’ than British. Its reputation is good although it’s not very well known.
Students do not leave feeling short changed as they do when completing their courses: Buckingham was voted first for student satisfaction in 2017, 2018, and 2019 and has been rated first for teaching excellence. Buckingham graduates find jobs more quickly than those from any other UK university.
It’s a good while since I was a university administrator. As one who worked in the established (largely but not exclusively) state-funded sector, I was a bit sniffy about a wholly privately-funded institution that seemed to be founded to make a political point, particularly since it focussed on two-year Bachelor’s degrees. However, despite not being government-funded, it has been recognised in a government award scheme for high-quality teaching.
However, what’s not clear is how that relates to its doctoral degrees. The more specialised the study, the more subjective the measure of “quality”. They’ve been granted the legal power to award doctoral degrees, and must therefore have the usual external examination process and so on, so I see no reason why it shouldn’t be treated as equivalent to a US doctoral degree. Whether it would count for as much as one from MIT (for example) is another matter.
" NACES | National Association of Credential Evaluation Services". AFAIK, It’s not a credential evaluation service: the Association I was a member of (many years ago) is a member of NACES and did credential evaluation.
Having said that, if it’s the same group as I remember, it probably maintains a list of accredited institutions, that it’s members refer to. If it does, the list is worth looking at.
Many years ago, one of my friends got entry into a PhD program in another country (always a very messy process, sometimes involving people so hopeless that they can’t get any locals). On his arrival, he found that his process was not complete, because our institution was not on their list: was not on our state government list because our institution pre-dated the process by which our state government listed and validated the degrees of new institutions with no history and no reputation.
I can’t say anything about the reputation of this school, but I’d like to provide a little background by pointing out that the distinction between public and private universities doesn’t really make as much sense in the UK (at least as far as England is concerned - things might be different in other parts of the UK) as in other countries.
Basically, all British universities are quite autonomous and manage themselves, including their own finances, independently. This applies just as much to universities that were directly founded by the government (which includes the University of Buckingham) as to universities that founded themselves without government initiative (such as Oxbridge). The funding of British universities is usually based on a mix of tuition fees, donations, third-party funding, and government grants.
The University of Buckingham is private in the sense that, unlike the vast majority of other universities in the country, it does not accept government grants (the scheme that administers these grants to universities is now called “Research England”, but it has changed its name several times in recent history). This is a conscious choice, as participation in the government grant schemes comes with conditionality, most importantly restrictions as to tuition policies. But there are other universities in the UK where the initiative of their establishment came from the private sector but which, today, participate in the Research England scheme and which would, in that sense, be considered public (but still with budgetary autonomy).
I have to say that article gives me some discomfort - it sounds a little like it could have been written by Nigel Farage, so I’d want to understand a bit more about the author (this guy?) before taking it as a good, impartial summary of Buckingham’s merits.
I suppose that the main problem with a doctorate from Buckingham, especially in the US, is that hardly anyone will have heard of it. A recruiter could well assume that it was the kind of doctorate that can be purchased on the internet with very little work.
Beneficiaries have included the University of Buckingham which unveiled the £8 million Vinson Building housing the Vinson Centre for Economics and Entrepreneurship in 2018
Which would be unfair, of course. Though it’s not entirely clear just how strong or deep its research activities are, in the OP’s specialist field. That’s something s/he will have to judge.