Campus Offers New Doctorate--Via Computer

The online Ph.D. program at the California Institute of Integral Studies is the newest thing in a very old educational tradition--the Socratic method.

Doctoral students in the program pursue a course of study that Socrates himself would recognize--reading, contemplating and then arguing their opinions in exhaustive detail.

And it’s all done by computer.

Students at the School for Transformative Learning never meet face to face. Although other college programs offer degrees through the mail, or by televised courses, the institute’s program is the only one Prof. Steve Eskow is aware of that does not require students to spend at least a few weeks together.

But this is not any back-of-the-matchbox degree. The institute was founded in 1968 and is accredited by the Western Assn. of Schools and Colleges, the primary accrediting organization for institutions of higher learning in California, Hawaii and Guam.

The goals of the three-year doctoral program are to train professionals to help rebuild society’s social institutions, Eskow said.

Students spend up to 15 hours per week engaged in a course of study consisting of a traditional plan of extensive reading and discussion. Materials include a heavy emphasis on research methodology and ethnography, Eskow said.

The first group of 10 students began the program last summer; another 16 are to begin in April.

The school works to create what Eskow calls “a learning community,” something that might seem difficult when students never meet. But the heart of the school’s community is communication, not physical proximity, Eskow said.

“You can live next to 10 people for years and never know them, but you can write letters to someone you’ve never even met and create a serious intellectual relationship with them,” he said.