Getting a doctorate in “education administration” is a quick and easy way for people in education, whether or not they actually intend to be administrators, to get that coveted title of “doctor” that frequently carries with it an automatic increase in pay. There really isn’t any body of knowledge to be mastered here, and I’d wager the title to my house that if you read through a pile of dissertations for Ed.D degrees, you wouldn’t find a single original idea.

Back in the 1970s, a wonderful curmudgeon named Richard Mitchell, who was known as The Underground Grammarian, wrote a number of pointed books dealing with the follies of education. I think it may have been in Less Than Words Can Say that he ruminated about the intellectual weakness of programs in education administration, at one point saying that one dissertation had to do with the best methods for storing badminton equipment.

This might make for a nice project for the Pope Center. We ought to read through a random sampling of Ed. D. dissertations with the objective of trying to discern any signs of intelligent life.