Presenting our research on the DBA vs. PhD in business/management

This week, my research team (including three of our Ph.D. students) will be presenting our preliminary results of our nationwide study comparing curricular requirements of DBA and PhD programs in business & management and also an analysis of the terminal degrees held by over 6,000 business and management faculty at over 400 AACSB, ACBSP and IACBE accredited institutions. It should be fun and I'll let you all know how it went. I love presenting at conferences (this will be my 143rd presentation--not that I'm counting).

 

Congratulations!

I am interested in reading your findings. Will they be available on the Internet?

 

I agree. I would love to read your report if we had access to it.

 

Any hints available via PM?

 

That does sound interesting. Is the study going to compare DBA vs PhD? There is an open thread on the NCU forums about the differences between these two programs. They seem to be almost identical at NCU save 2 courses and a vague requirement to create new knowledge in the PhD program which may or may not apply to the DBA.

 

NCU appears confused when it comes to their DBA. Back in 2005 I posted this:

http://www.degreeinfo.com/general-distance-learning-discussions/20272-no-dissertation-northcentral-university-international-dept-dba.html

Keep in mind this was under the old ownership. Personally I believe the reaction from the DI gang helped kill this no-dissertation DBA..

 

Possibly. We do plan to submit two articles based on our findings to peer-reviewed journals, but I should be able to share some our findings on Degreeinfo.

 

The likelihood is quite high

 

Since the conventional wisdom is that the Ph.D. is the "research degree" to prepare researchers and faculty, we actually performed two complimentary studies to answer the followng questions:

1) Do those in Ph.D. and D.B.A. programs in management receive significantly different training (e.g. total number of required units, number of required courses in research, whether a dissertation is required)?

2) Is the D.B.A. an acceptable terminal degree for business/management faculty in graduate programs in management?

 

Very good. I have access to Florida International University and the University of Miami's library holdings so please let us know when it is available.

 

It depends on the country as well. In Australia and the UK, the DBA is clearly identified as a professional qualification and hardly accepted for full time faculty appointments (in the UK or Australia there are no tenure tracks). Many positions put emphasis on the PhD and DBAs are normally accepted for part time teaching only.

In Canada, it doesn't matter much as both are terminal degrees. The quality of publications and teaching experience is far more important than the degree designation. The degree has to come from a credible institution.

In the US, most schools would accept one or the other but I noticed that some schools changed the name of the doctorate from a DBA to a PhD. The general trend seems to offer the DBA as a watered down version of the PhD that is meant for professionals and many times offered online or as a part time program. For the last reason, many schools now seem to prefer the PhD as they see that other schools offer more professional oriented doctoral programs such as DM, DBA, DMgt, etc that are not meant to train scholars. However, regardless of the designation, the AACSB accreditation seems to be the main differentiator and not so much the designation (DBA vs PhD).


In general, if I were in a school that has both options (e.g. NCU), I would rather do the PhD as it is more prestigious in general. If I had a choice betweek a DBA from an AACSB accredited school or a PhD from a non accredited one, I would select the DBA anytime.

I only have experience with UK and Australian DBAs. In general, these programs accept dissertations of shorter lengths than the PhD and accept applied research projects. The other difference is that DBAs require many times less external examiners. Most of the DBAs in the UK and Australia require very little course work component so in a way they are very similar to the PhDs. In short, the DBAs seems to be more oriented towards the development of professionals and not the training of scholars.

 

Congrats, Anthony!

Roscoe

 

I think the perception from the general public is that only a PhD requires a dissertation.
I often wonder why I am in the PhD program at all. The dissertation doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me.
Columbia has a PD in Computer Science that is 100% course based, includes only 30 credits, and has no dissertation. That sounds better for a practitioner and future part time teacher than a research oriented degree. Its just so expensive.

 

I can't wait!

 

Ryoder,

Do you think Professional Degree considers as Doctorate level? Also, I think Columbia University not only withdrew Doctor of Engineering Science in Computer Science, but also Professional Degree in Computer Science. The Columbia University's Computer Science departments only offer PD in Computer System Engineering via CVN.
URL: http://cvn.columbia.edu/deg.php

 

You have hit the nail on the head. We found that the use of non-PhD doctoral degrees outside of the U.S. has far greater variation. There was plenty for us to study without having to delve into the world of "taught" vs. "research" vs. "publication" vs. "etc." doctorates, so we focused our efforts exclusively on U.S. programs. We will leave the study of non-U.S. degrees to those with expertise and interest in that area.

We found the same. Three of the top 10 producers of DBA degrees held by faculty (Indiana U., Mississippi State U. and Kent State U.) have converted their DBA degrees to PhD. So has U. of Kentucky in my state.

In our analysis of secondarily accredited (AACSB/IACBE/ACBSP) programs, we did not find this to be true, certainly not as Harvard or Boston U. However, since we identified only 10 DBA programs in management among the 104 doctoral programs, it is entirely possible that non-secondarily accredited programs may be different. We haven't studied that yet.

It is certainly true that the Ph.D. is, by far, the preferred degree in management/strategic management/business management, however we found over 360 faculty (about 6% of the total) with the DBA. We did notice that the accounting, marketing, I.T. and supply chain departments appeared to have much higher instances of DBAs, though we did not collect the data on them for this particular study, as we limited it to management doctorates. While the DBA and PhD degrees did not differ significantly from each other in terms of curriculum, the few DM/DMgt programs were different than the PhD/DBA programs.

I would agree that the accreditation makes more difference than the degree title, although were found a number of faculty with degrees from Argosy/U. of Sarasota, which is not secondarily accredited.

In our very limited look at non-U.S. degree, we found the same.

 

You may be right, but the public is wrong. The DBA programs that we studied all required comprehensive examinations and research dissertations, just as the PhD programs do.

 

I'm reviving an old thread here. Did this ever get published? Are the results available for review?

 

Okay......

 

Thanks for asking...

We presented the results at a national conference and received a very good reception. We are in the process of completing the manuscripts and will be submitting them for publication very soon. I will keep my Degreeinfo colleagues informed when the publication is available.