PHD in Accounting, Online?

Discussion in 'Business and MBA degrees' started by mtaylor583604, Feb 17, 2016.

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  1. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    Put it this way, a PhD in Accounting from a non AACSB accredited school might be worth about 70 to 80K as a starting salary (maybe less) while a PhD in Accounting from an AACSB accredited school is worth at least 130K as a starting salary.

    You can argue anything you want but the AACSB accreditation carries tangible value in terms of salary.
     
  2. Phdtobe

    Phdtobe Well-Known Member

    How does a collective agreement affect your statement? Many collective agreements have years-of-experience/years-of-education grids for employees. Exempt employees, then that's another matter, mostly market based.
     
  3. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    I have worked in Universities for more than 15 years in Canada and have served in Unions. Simple, most Universities in Canada have market supplements for those teaching in fields in great demand plus most contractual agreements have provisions for individual supplements when the market requires it.

    In Ontario, most Accounting teachers with more than 10 years of experience are making more than 200K at recognized Universities.

    CPAs average salary is about 150K so it is not going to be easy to attract people to do a PhD on top of a CPA so most schools have to pay high salaries to attract faculty but for the PhD to be recognized it has to come from a credible school and the AACSB accreditation is a good metric for this.

    Some people with CPAs do online PhDs from places like Walden, NCU, etc but most that do this end teaching at community or 4 year colleges where salaries are not that high but still good enough (about 100K).

    In any case, a PhD or DBA in Accounting AACSB accredited or not has very good value so it is a good investment in my opinion.
     
  4. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    I understand what you're getting at, and certainly AACSB accreditation has utility. But that doesn't make business schools that bear the AACSB label prestigious, which was the issue Ted Heiks brought up to which I was responding.

    Also, there are a lot of very good foreign universities, such as UK, Australian, South African, that do not have AACSB accreditation, but that fact certainly wouldn't handicap the holder of a PhD from there such that they'd be locked in at $70K or $80K or less. For example, less than 30 B-schools are AACSB in the UK, but there are over 100 b-schools over there. Can't imagine non-AACSB terminal doctorates from Leicester (top 40 in accounting in the UK), Heriot-Watt (top 25 in accounting in the UK) or Exeter (top 10 in accounting in the UK) would be handicaps.

    But if you want to make the argument with UoP, Northcentral or Walden or other such schools lacking AACSB holding a person back from getting into the tenure track/$130K+ world, I agree, unless something else unusual is going on there with the candidate (such as Big 4 partnership on their CV), they're probably going to be slotted into the AACSB master's-only pay category.
     
  5. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    The accreditation is just a metric, when you have thousands of business schools around the world, it is hard to tell which one is worth looking at. Not many in Canada would know what is Walden, NCU, etc so the accreditation is just a metric. Four year colleges normally only need an accredited PhD so any school that can be equivalent to a Canadian PhD would qualify for an advertised position.
    AACSB accredited schools on the other hand check the ranking of the school of your PhD. Yes, a school like Mcgill that does not hold AACSB accreditation would qualify you to teach at a top business school and the same for many of the schools you mentioned.
    Many of the online schools mentioned here are only popular in this forum but do not appear even in known rankings.
    Most people that teach accounting only have an MBA and a CPA, many prefer to remain in practice instead of research. If you run a successful practice, you can make 100K and you can make another 100K teaching as a lecturer so the PhD is really not needed unless you just want to be called DR.
     
  6. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    Had no idea Mcgill wasn't AACSB; that school's every bit on the level of our ivies, they certainly could pass any standards they want. Like you describe of some accounting academics, I have a colleague who's MBA/CPA and makes good money as a lecturer, though not as much as she'd likely make with her level of expertise and experience for a public firm or in industry. I can only assume she does it for the lifestyle, as she left us after several years in academia, spent a couple out in the industry, then came back. The hard part is finding people willing to teach accounting. A Big 4 partner can make upwards of $500,000 to $1 million, even a partner of a smaller firm can make $150K to $250K. Under those conditions, it's hard to convince someone of the utility of spending an additional 4 or 5 years in school to get a PhD with nothing but a stipend to keep them going, then going on the market to make $130K to $200K.
     
  7. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    I have a MSc in Accounting but not a CPA, I use it to adjunct here and there but not really making huge amounts of money with it.
    A CPA in Canada is a long way, you need to pass an exam and work for an accounting firm for several years.
    I have also degrees in Engineering and Math. To be quite honest, accounting is a lot easier than engineering and math but quite more lucrative.
     
  8. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    True that. Accounting can be very lucrative, but not as difficult, if you judge difficulty by analytical and logical mental horsepower--which is a fair way of judging it. My wife did math up through the PhD level but stopped short of the dissertation, a very close friend did EE also got his master's, and has worked in engineering for 15 years. The studies I've done in accounting are challenging (at least they were for me), but while I can teach it at least at a principles level, I'll never be able to comprehend the eight page math problems my wife did or design complex computerized things that actually work like my close friend did.
     
  9. Lola Fajemirokun

    Lola Fajemirokun New Member


    This is really useful. The University of Liverpool is no longer accepting applicants for this program because it is being revamped. I saw that Liberty University has a full online DBA with an accounting concentration does anuone know if a PHD from Liberty University will be helpful in getting a tenure track job at an accredited college?
     

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