28.10.2009
Business PhD Applications on the Rise
A weak job market has many contemplating PhDs and faculty jobs. Will the business school faculty shortage be a thing of the past? With expenses such as business lunches being curtailed and a dwindling list of new clients, Wayne Nelms knew it was only a matter of time before he would be laid off by accounting firm Grant Thornton. "The writing was on the wall. I just didn't know when," says Nelms, 36, who worked as senior internal auditor at the company's Baltimore office for two-and-a-half-years. "Then I got the e-mail." By January he was out of a job and found himself at a crossroads. Reluctant to jump back into the job market immediately, he started exploring his options and stumbled upon the PhD Project, a nonprofit that encourages minority business professionals to earn PhDs and go on to become professors. He'd heard of the program back when he was an MBA student at Howard University but had put it on the back burner after graduation. "When D-day happened, I decided, well I can do one of two things with my future: Either get a doctorate or look for a good old dependable job," said Nelms, who got in contact with the PhD Project. A few weeks later he applied and was accepted to the accounting PhD program at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Md., where he'll be starting full-time this fall. Says Nelms: "With a doctorate, I thought my destiny would be a little more in my control." Nelms is part of a growing wave of professionals who are leaving the battered business world behind for a career in the hallowed halls of academia. Applications are up substantially this year at many top business PhD programs, with some business schools reporting jumps in applications as high as 40%. PhD program directors attribute the jump to professionals fleeing a weak job market, coupled with a surge of interest from undergraduates bypassing that job market entirely to head straight for school. Meanwhile, organizations like the PhD Project say more people than ever before are expressing interest in their programs and annual conference, which attracted the largest number of participants in the organization's 15-year history this fall. It's an encouraging sign for the world of management education, where a looming faculty shortage has had B-school deans worried for years. The surge of interest in becoming a business professor comes just as a backlash is being felt among those in the business community who hold MBAs, says Yuval Bar-Or, an adjunct at Johns Hopkins University's Carey Business School and author of Is a PhD for Me? A Cautionary Guide for Aspiring Doctoral Students, slated for release on May 19. Many fleeing the business world for academia may view it as a more venerable profession, he says. "MBAs are now persona non grata in many places, and there is a fair amount of animosity being directed at them for living in the fast lane, spending everyone's money, and not being responsible enough," Bar-Or says. "So business leaders, in society's eyes, have been knocked off a pedestal, and that may be causing a lot of people with an interest in business to want to go down a path that is more respected in society." More on this topic at: http://www.businessweek.com/ |
