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A shortage of scholars- Why undertake a PhD in business?
For students with an interest in business there is another three-letter qualification to consider – the MBA. But specialist Masters degrees, such as the MSc in Finance, are also becoming a viable option for business minded students. McCormick is quick to point out the difference between the qualifications and the ideal candidates for each. “They are very different degrees and attract very different candidates,” she says.
“The PhD is a research degree that focuses on an academic discipline, and its tools and methodologies that are relevant to business. Theoretical tools, methodological tools that help to solve problems relevant to practice. A prime candidate is someone who wants to research business problems or study what managers do; they don’t want to be managers themselves. Doing is not enough for doctoral candidates; they want to know why and to understand problems more deeply.
Refining knowledge
“An MBA is for those who want to run companies and make managerial decisions. They want to make quick decisions, act and then move on. They work at a practical level and are not as interested in the theory behind their choices,” she says.
“The specialist Master’s degree programs are for students who want to learn new or more in-depth tools in a particular field – like finance or information technology – for a career in a specific business function. Graduates of a MSc in Finance have careers in banking or finance departments and grads with a MS in Accounting often go to accounting departments of large firms.”
Doctorate programs vary in both length and structure according to the student’s place of study. The US and increasingly across the whole of Europe, a significant period of the first year is spent in classes, refining theoretical knowledge and reviewing methodological approaches. There then follows a period of between two and four years of research and writing, under the close supervision of a small number of academic members of staff, resulting in the production of a thesis or original work between 80,000 and 100,000 words in length.
In Spring 2008, Temple University, Fox School of Business in Philadelphia had 123 students in all stages of their PhD study, 79 of whom were international students.
William E. Aaronson, director of the Cochran Research Center & Doctoral Studies and PhD BA program director at Fox School of Business says the primary mission of the PhD in business administration is to prepare future faculty for top research schools of business.
A competitive Europe
“In order to more effectively meet this mission, in recent years we have hired a substantial number of highly qualified faculty with international reputations for their outstanding research. Faculty members with outstanding reputations provide more effective skill.”
Doctoral graduates aren’t just in demand in the US academic arena though. Since March 2000 and the Lisbon Agenda, a significant policy decision to ‘make Europe, by 2010, the most competitive and the most dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world’, all European governments have prioritised the production and the investment in the production of knowledge. By pledging to invest three per cent of gross national product in research and development, Europe will need some 700,000 extra researchers to achieve such a goal.
The Wall St Journal has called those with doctoral qualifications next to their name the “new nomads” - an affectionate name that describes this group of scholars quite accurately. They are very mobile from university to university and as McCormick describes, “you can be the master of your own time during the day.”
“A career in business academics is the most flexible life you can have. Scholars tend to roam (from institution to institution) because their loyalty is to their field not to their institution, which is very different to that of an MBA who’s loyalty is to their industry or their company. A life of a scholar is a passion.”
