Why We Haven’t Done Away with Our School's PhD Program

 By Caryn L. Beck-Dudley 
dean, College of Business, Florida State University

Much has been written about the decline in business doctoral production and the AACSB report Management Education at Risk identified the doctoral shortage as a critical concern for the future of management education. Many factors were explored that contributed to this decline, including better job opportunities in the private sector and time to completion issues.

There also has been talk that the popular press’ focus on MBA programs may contribute to the decline. The conventional wisdom is that since doctoral programs are not ranked, business schools have focused on the financially lucrative and visible MBA program and either reduced, eliminated, or failed to start doctoral programs. 

One of the reasons for the decline not cited in the report--but one that clearly exists--is the expense of running a PhD program. In addition to faculty time, PhD stipends are expensive and create situations where schools must choose between the MBA money makers or the financial demands of a PhD program.  

Interestingly, one solution to the crisis, not proposed in the report, is for more schools to step up to the plate and produce PhD students. We still find relatively constant and considerable student interest in pursuing a PhD. The real problem for us has been escalation in PhD stipends paid by competing schools. This rise is exasperated by the lack of external research money that can be generated to support PhD students in business. It also is difficult to convince provosts to provide PhD stipends to business doctoral students when in other areas, such as engineering and science, faculty members support their graduate students with their own grant money, enabling those students to produce even more research dollars. 

With all of these negatives, why does Florida State choose to keep a PhD program? The reason is simple—it allows us to attract strong faculty and to produce high quality research. In the competitive market for talented faculty, the fact that we have a PhD program allows us to “land” faculty we might not otherwise attract which in turn elevates our research contributions.

Even though our program, like many others, has funding issues and struggles to offer competitive stipends, we are proud of the fact that we continue to support a robust PhD program with more than 80 doctoral students in seven discipline areas. Each year Florida State University graduates 12-15 potential faculty members. We have leveraged the PhD Project and promoted diversity by producing 32 minority PhDs over the past 10 years. We also have had excellent success in attracting students who can compete with graduate students for FSU’s coveted, but limited, university wide fellowships.

Even with these successes, we continually evaluate the effectiveness of the program, which has brought us to the following conclusions. We are producing PhDs for the academic market, focusing on creating excellent scholars, excellent teachers and excellent members of the academy.  Our programs require research activity the day the student enters our doors. Producing sole-authored conference papers and paper submissions in the second year also is expected. The role of comprehensive exams is being reexamined (we still have them) but in most of our programs they are no longer the “hurdle” they were for our faculty. 

Rather, the new hurdle is external review, which is modeled after the faculty three-year review. Using the peer review process provides students with realistic expectations about faculty life and starts to give them the skills necessary to be successful faculty members. 

Students also teach frequently, although we are evaluating whether they teach too much. We have adopted doctoral teaching awards to honor our best. Students receive written evaluations each year which helps them develop a thick skin for the realities of faculty life. A side benefit is that it helps document the process in case of unforeseen problems. We also expect our students to be visible members of the academic community by early participation in regional and national meetings and attendance at doctoral consortia. 

We are proud of our doctoral program and will continue to improve its effectiveness. It is my hope that other beneficiary universities will consider adding or increasing PhD production, another part of the solution to the doctoral shortage we all face.

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