I was once asked to advise a candidate for a PhD in Education on a statistical method he was using in his dissertation (I had a lot of experience with the method). He was doing it right, so advising him was easy. Basically, he was analyzing the results of a survey. That wouldn't get him a PhD in any of the physical sciences. What really struck me, though, was all the hoops he was being forced to jump through. His proposal for his dissertation was longer than my whole dissertation. I concluded that they were making him do busywork so that he'd value his PhD. "It mist be worth something; look how hard I had towork to get it."
Actually, he’s probably headed into writing books supporting whatever theories he thinks works in the classroom- and that means citing loads of statistical studies and repeating “the mean” over and over. None of which will be of any use in the classroom to guys like me.