Published: 2026-01-01
Last Updated: 2026-01-01
You are here: /blog/doctorate-degrees-cost-and-time
The United States is once again falling behind on its developed nation status. School commitments seem to be a big contributor to low throughput and throttled economies that result in an economic crash approximately every 10 years in the U.S.
Rhetorically, a doctorate degree is a degree for a 60 year old hospital worker with qualifications in medicine, health examination, information research, and observation. Realistically, they should be issued to 16 to 24 year olds so they can work alongside other health workers within their age groups. Non-discriminatorily, they will be allowed to work with all age groups as they obtain more qualifications such as cell biology in those over 70 and circadian rhythms in those over 100.
A juris doctor is a degree designation for those that obtained medical qualifications through court procedure, lacking only health worker experience in a hospital.
The most affordable doctorate degree that was found was at a cost of $45k for 45 credits, averaging 15 classes. The issue with enrollment is the supervisory requirement. Technically, the school should be the supervisor to speed things along with human development goals. The person should be able to complete the program, and have a work plan or business model/goal after graduation.
Using post recession numbers, the degree is affordable but, potentially takes three years. This means that even though the cost is achievable, the time commitment is not realistic with current work expectations and will delay someone in their work goals by an unrealistic schedule. A person qualified to be a doctor expects their school credential to be issued within six months of agreeing to the work commitment unless they are under the age of 24. Even then, 3 years might be a maybe instead of a definite yes and 2 years is the more desirable outcome. For under 24, 2-3 years of school is likely the correct number for a doctorate degree.
Using time commitments for a masters degree, associates degree, graduate school, and massive courseware; the following time commitments emerge when doing the work all at once without any weekly throttling.
| Study Type | Level | Credits | Time Commitment |
| Associates | 100-200 | 3 | 16-24 Hours |
| Graduate | 600-640 | 3 | 16-24 Hours |
| Masters | 500-525 | 3 | 16-24 Hours |
| Massive Courseware | n/a | n/a | 16-24 Hours |
| Online HS | 9th/10th | 0.5 | 16-24 Hours |
At the associate level a 1 credit class does not necessarily take any longer than a 2 or 3 credit class. Its all about course preparation, verifying objectives, and completing the requirements. A lot of the time commitment is busy work or scavenger hunts which is a contrast to succinct task lists in professional work environments. Someone can either complete the task list or they cant. If they require training it is either at a reasonable time or cost or its not.
Some of the associates work can be completed in 45 minutes which that with experience, a 3 credit class may take 6 hours. A 2-3 hour session with full course unlock can result in 3 weeks of class being completed at a time. Same time commitment as week by week unlock.
At the graduate and masters level, the full coursework takes about 2-3 days. One of the schools has lowered its time commitment to 8-10 hours for 7.5 weeks which means 60 hours per 3 credits. Using this convention, a 30 credit masters degree with 10 classes would take 600 hours in the workplace. About the amount of time as a temp job before they hire someone full time. This means that a doctorate would take 900 hours or less than 6 months.
Traditionally, one college or university credit is approximately 40 hours of studying, lectures, reading, and homework. This is no longer the case for most students which results in complaints on loan amounts and overall time commitment.
This is how long it would take to complete a college or university degree if done in a professional environment as part of job training. Most people would not need the full degree, just a few classes or concepts.
| Associates | Bachelors | Masters | Doctorate | Total | |
| hours | 60 credits | 60 credits | 30 credits | 45 credits | 195 credits |
| time to complete (in hours) | |||||
| 8 | 1200 | 1200 | 600 | 900 | 3900 |
| 10 | 1500 | 1500 | 750 | 1125 | 4875 |
| 7.5 | 2400 | 2400 | 1200 | 1800 | 7800 |
| - | - | - | - | - | - |
| 2 | 320 | 320 | 160 | 240 | 1040 |
| 3 | 480 | 480 | 240 | 360 | 1560 |
| 0.75 | 120 | 120 | 60 | 90 | 390 |
| The first column is time commitment per week and the number of weeks varies by program, college, and university. | |||||
Most of the math has been done so that the table evaluates against the full degree program. For example, the 7.5 hours per week are for 120 hours per 3 credits and the 8-10 hours are for a 7.5 week program. The 45 minute study period per class, averaging 3 credits, is for an 8 week per class program.
Either way a lot of it is busy work, such formatting for a certain style guide or doing a scavenger hunt for course material to include in the references. Other busy work includes resubmitting work due to lack of specificity in the initial requirements. This is also used to improve grades so rarely gets complaints on the policy.
Quizzes could use improvement across the board, while there are some ambiguous questions, they rarely affect the grade and are used to deal with "complexes" in straight A students such as perfectionism or ocd. However, this can drop someones grade from a B to a C, or put someone definitely at a B if they are finally straddling an A. If there is ambiguity in the quiz questions that were marked wrong, this should be brought to the attention of the instructor. It can improve a grade and might be part of professional development regarding fairness and communications.
At the high school level, the students are essentially studying the same concepts that are available in a degree program. Many people that are recruited for college or university study on their own anyways. School is more a peer review or verifications check than a learning environment. While 0.5 or 1/2 a credit takes 16-24 hours, an additional 0.5 or 1/2 a credit takes an additional 4-6 hours if it is in the same class for the same topic.
The massive courseware is done by actual universities and some of the courses do have transfer credit, up to 12 credits. The ones that do not have transfer credit are part of a professional certificates which have a series of courses. Usually, 2-4 classes. They each take approximately 16 to 24 hours to complete.
There appears to be a trend of 16 to 24 hours for a class which falls within the requirements of 2 weeks training when switching jobs. Many full time jobs are also going to 25-32 hours with the minimum acceptable wage being money for rent, food, utilities, work clothes, and transportation. The employer pays for all equipment and the workers do not do reimbursements anymore.
This leaves the work qualification for people that have 8-12 years of school work completed to be measured against pay for people without loans and who accomplish the same goals and tasks each week at the same level of quality.
Traditionally doctorate degrees are completed as follows, more recently employers and workers have expressed to a desire to go back to high school diplomas and some college as needed. This means universities will likely be used for other purposes than issuing degrees if the real estate isn't sold for other purposes.
| Degree | Description |
| Ph.D. | Doctor through Philosophy, psychology focused |
| M.D. | Doctor through Medical School |
| J.D. | Doctor through Jury Trials |
| Psy.D. | Doctor of Psychology |
| Ed.D. | Doctor of Education |
| D.E. | Doctor through Engineering |
| D.Np | Doctor through Nursing practice |
There are various other doctors such as pharmacists, psychiatrists, oncologist, and optometrists. The current question is not if a doctorate degree is worth the time and cost but whether it should take 8 to 12 years and if HS Biology class is better suited for the initial doctors qualification.