Doctors of Doom: What a PhD Really Means in the US National Security Community: A VICE News Investigation

• posted January 27, 2016

A follow up to Bill Arkin’s and my ranking of the VICE News: Most Militarized Universities in America, Doctors of Doom reveals:

• Online for-profit schools currently dominate the awarding of doctoral degrees to intelligence professionals, with four for-profit online schools Capella University, Walden University, the University of Phoenix, and Northcentral University awarding the most degrees, almost 15 percent of the total.
• 1 out of 50 doctoral degrees in the US Intelligence Community come from unaccredited schools.
• Since 9/11, there has been a pronounced shift in doctoral degrees in the IC away from the humanities, social sciences, hard sciences, and engineering, and toward professional studies like business administration, information technology management, and various homeland security practices.
• After 9/11 business administration overtook all other doctoral degrees in the IC, increasing by hundreds of %.
• While some elite schools Georgetown, MIT, Yale, Columbia rank among the top 50 PhD schools in the IC, their decline in influence in the past decade is noticeable, even when one examines the highest level entity of the intelligence community, the National Intelligence Council.
• An examination of the formal educations of Top Secret workers affirms a widening gulf between elected/confirmed decision-makers and the national security rank and file and between the rank and file and society at large.

Read: Doctors of Doom: What a PhD Really Means in the US National Security Community