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I Thought some of you online ed naysayers would find this article interesting regarding Coursera: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/opinion/friedman-come-the-revolution.html#commentsContainer Cheers!

Exactly, the perception by non-academics is that professors got to stay in college for an additional 5+ years and party while pursuing their PhD on the taxpayers dime, and now that their faculty they work 6-hours a week, get summers off, and have job security for life! This however is anything but the truth... Most faculty suffered to prepare for and gain admission to their PhD program, put their entire lives on hold to finish the program, and then when they finish they have a ticking tenure clock hanging over their head which requires them to attend to their research over summer, thus making it a year around full time job. The idea that they are sitting around and surfing the web or sitting at home on their hands is just NOT how this game works...

OP -- have you reached any conclusions regarding your future in the PhD program?

Any idea on what the attrition rate is for Accounting PhD programs? What accounting programs are well known for dropping students during the program through various techniques such as if a student fails his/her comprehensive exams? Which programs rarely ever drop a student?

Well I think your analysis of the 150-unit rule is slightly over simplified. You're assuming that all the students did their undergraduate studies in accounting and are already gainfully employed at the time they begin their masters coursework. This however is quite often not the case... Some students students did their undergraduate studies in another field such as engineering and are switching paths... Others have yet to find jobs or want to continue to test the waters and seek out additional employment opportunities... plus some students take MBA courses as electives and want to network with the MBA students, etc. etc. I don't forsee all MAcc students quite so readily endorsing an online format. You know I was thinking about the effects that online education could potentially have on our youth today and the effects would be devistating to say the least... We would be raising an entire generation in their parents basement via a webcam. It seems like this would have some pretty profound consequences on our youth's social skills which would be quite a shame... Also, keep in mind people that this doomsday, apocalyptic scenario was carved out by a grumpy old professor... not me! I was just relaying the message. Don't shoot the messenger... :eager:

Very true, i mean if academia doesn't pan out there is definitely stuff you can do in industry. Probably wouldn't be most peoples first choice but it isn't the end of the world either...

One thing that I do see playing heavily in favor of accounting PhDs is the 150-unit rule. This new sweeping piece of legislation has made it so basically every would-be CPA has to now acquire a masters degree to be a part of the accounting profession. And as was stated, i'm sure some students will opt to 'do it online' but many others will opt for traditional brick and mortar schools. Possible_Phd, What do you project the future job market at lower tier, more teaching or balanced oriented school to look like for Accounting PhDs for the forseeable future?

I think here in lies the catch though... I agree that a 'Professors' job is knowledge creation and that the vast majority of the weeks work is (or at least should be) doing research. But business professors don't do grant writing like other academic disciplines and if the university can't gain enough head count because everyone is able to access the knowledge via webcam for for virtually free then how is the university going to raise enough funds to pay for the professor to conduct research much less pay the faculty members exorbitant salary. And like I stated previously, the TOP faculty members at TOP schools will likely not go anywhere. Its all these lower to mid-range programs that are more teaching oriented that are under threat. Parents are not overly excited to send their children to a college and spend thousands and thousands of dollars on tuition and fund the tenure of professors so that their kids learn accounting from faculty members who have never worked A SINGLE DAY in the field and barely know the difference between a debit and a credit and whose primary job is to publish theoretical articles in a journal that no one reads. There is an outrageous disconnect here and will not hold up much longer...

Yea I think it's pretty obvious that higher education is about to go through a pretty radical transformation. Call me a fringe lunatic or a fear monger. Truthfully, I really don't care. I would guess that most of the people that troll this forum are highly intelligent and motivated individuals and they have reached a similar conclusion but are simply in self denial. It's pretty obvious that this change is going to happen sooner rather than later. Every other industry has had to adjust, adapt, and evolve over time or they become extinct. Academia being the only real exception I can think of that has been able to 'hide' from and avoid cultural and technological shifts. They have been able to get away with this because they traditionally have had a complete monopoly (almost like a cartel) on the credentialing process. But the system is at its breaking point. Tax payers are fed up. The tax payers don't even know what they are getting in return for their money anymore. Graduates are leaving with no skills, there are no jobs available for them, and most of the 'research' the faculty conducts NOBODY actually cares one iota about nor does much of it even add any benefit to the greater good. This is why I believe in large part universities are scrambling to build up lavish on campus amenities... its to give the students a 'reason' to attend. Otherwise they'd have no purpose for being there. If you don't believe me then just watch the speech Bill Gates gave at the Techonomy Conference in Lake Tahoe last August. He had every person in higher education practically squirming right out of their seat. A year after he spoke MITs president announced the launch of MITx. An online education format that will now not only offer the best lectures and course materials but will be interactive as well! What's next?

Only you can ultimately determine what is best for you but I think it is pretty obvious that you have basically mentally 'checked out' already and just want us to rubber stamp your decision to leave the program. And to be honest who could really blame you? You're analysis of the accounting profession is basically dead on. After you've worked in the profession for a few years you can basically 'write your own ticket' so to speak. Meaning, continue working long hours in public with your energetic young peers or you can take a more chill path and work in corporate or government. I think a lot of the intangibles that academia purports to bestow on accounting professors really aren't much of a perk at all because those perks already exist in industry if your an established CPA: 1) Tenure - Once you've established a reputation in the accounting profession and are a CPA you basically already have job security for life. Sure, you can get laid off or down sized but if you have a marketable nitch you just basically walk across the street and get a job at the competing firm or company. All while i'm writing this governments all across the country are entertaining the idea of saving money by changing and/or outright eliminating tenure in academia. 2) Summers off - I don't know any professor, at least not at research intensive schools that are pre-tenure that don't work basically all summer. The difference: They were in a largely solitary, uninhabited environment while industry peeps at least have some interaction and comradery. 3) You don't have a set place to be - This might actually be worse! Yes its true that you don't have someone peering over your shoulder every 5-minutes and you don't have to track your time but what is going to motivate you to work at all? Or if motivated, when will enough ever be enough? The publication process is so results oriented it is sickening. Hours spent working are never rewarded, only pure output. 4) You get to work on what you want - In speaking with many faculty they have told me that professors (at least pre-tenure) often pass up most projects that they are truly interested in exploring for fear of 'rocking the boat' or for fear that a publication wont emerge so they opt for more mundane boring work simply to generate a publication. 5) I will actually be make a difference - Let me let you in on a little secret... you won't be. From a teaching prospective: I actually spoke to an accounting professor that threw in the towel after a few years and opted out for Wall Street because he said his MBA students would just fall asleep :sleeping: in class and were totally unengaged and disinterested in the subject. It's an MBA students worst nightmare. Its the class that nobody wants to go to. And as a result, nobody wants to see your face... No matter how charming it may be :miserable: From a research prospective: most of the research that accounting professors do industry does NOT care one iota about. Its largely mundane, theoretical, overly quantitative and detached from practical application. And you must know what the students think about it -- they really really couldn't care less. Some students are so out of it they don't even realize that accounting professors get PhDs and publish. :glee: Do you actually want to get in on useful research that is accesible to practioners? My suggestion is stay in industry and submit manuscripts to peer reviewed practioner related journals that deal with issues you have come across on client engagements (e.g., BNA, Tax Notes, etc. etc.) 6) Variety in your work: There is almost no variety what-so-ever in being a professor. Other then sitting on an entertaining university committee every now and then such as the faculty senate where you get to see PhD's act like over grown children it offers far far far less variety then industry ever will. You're entire job is to sit in an isolated environment all day and read boring journals and try to 'contribute' to them. If you have no creative spark (like most accountants) and look at reading these journals as a chore now, it seems like you would be setting yourself up for a lifetime prison sentence because you are going to be trapped reading these awful things for your entire career. Whereas in industry if you don't like your specific task you said it best yourself, accounting is a broad degree so change your job function and/or company. The only real break from research is teaching and college students have become so unpleasent to be around these days I hardly see this as a joy or reward at all. Due to the soaring coast of education students have become more picky and demanding then even your worst clients at an accounting firm. They treat college as a service where they pay the university to offer them luxury resort like facilities and grades in exchange for tuition. Frankly the only business professors that students even respect at all are those that lecture at night and currently work in the field. If you really wanna build repor with students become an instructor at night at your local university and share 'war stories' with them about what it's like to work in the field. This is all they really care about honestly. Not whether or not the professor has an 'A' level publication. Heck, none of them even know what an 'A' level publication even is. Or even what the seminal accounting journals are. Nor do they care, like what-so-ever... 7) Academia is about to go through a radical transformation: I am not going to belabor this point because I have brought this up in prior threads and largely been attacked for it. If you are curious to see you can check out my thread entitled 'Is the demand for an Accounting PhD all that its cracked up to be' but basically some pretty bright people such as Bill Gates are calling for a complete overhaul of our entire education system which might render most tenure track faculty positions obsolete at all but the very best research intensive schools. When and if this will happen is up for great speculation but I think its starting to finally become pretty obvious to all no matter how much they are in self-denial that this change will happen and it will happen sooner rather than later. The tax payers are fed up and the technology is basically there to make this happen... Now could you take the PhD and go work in industry with it? Absolutely! Those jobs do exist but most of those jobs any well trained, hardworking CPA with a few years of experience and the right networking could get too... In fact they would actually probably be the preferred candidate because most of the stuff you studied in a PhD program is overly theoretical and detached from practical application. Your post has been more helpful and far reaching then you can even imagine. It has basically become the kiss of death to my PhD ambitions as well. You make me realize how much this is probably not the right path for me either. Thank you for sharing with everyone your situation. My advice would be to just skip out on the worthless masters degree from your PhD school or even in getting an MBA and just go back to work. Only do the MBA if you want to change your job function or see yourself working in management because you already have a masters degree. Just my 2Cents.

Have any of the faculty or students pulled you aside and mentioned anything with respect to your inability to answer questions or retain information during seminars? Or do they just kind of give you evil eye...:disgust: This is kind of what i'm worried about too... Being utterly BORED to TEARS by the research and as a result being mentally and emotionally checked out... One pretty notable accounting professor told me that there is often a stark personality difference between a successful practicing CPA and a professor. That being, that the CPA doesn't really have to be that 'into' their job (although they can be) and can still be pretty darn good at it and make a respectable living. The CPA typically gets to turn the 'work switch' off at some point during the day and attend to other personal matters. But as a professor, if you're not really into what you're doing then I don't see how there is any way you could ever have a successful career, especially if you've mentally checked out this early in the game because it seems to be an around the clock commitment that does not get any better. From what faculty have told me, life after graduation is just as demanding as being a PhD student because you spend 60-80 hours a week trying to get your research off the ground. Often in solitude. In corresponding with other notable faculty and PhD students at some TOP progams what they have really tried to get across to me is along the same lines that you were discussing: Read lots of papers from sources such as the Accounting Review as early as possible and ask yourself the honest question of whether you actually see yourself reading (in detail) and producing papers in these journals for the rest of your career. Otherwise simply put: do something else. But only you can decide what is ultimately best for you based on your personality and interests. -------- Interesting side story: the faculty at a TOP program were generous enough to allow me to attend a few accounting seminars at their school so that I could get a closer look at the research process and I was pretty surprised and even a little taken back by how miserable all the PhD students looked in the audience (no joke), including the presenter who was presenting their job market paper! The presenter is currently on the job market looking at a tenure track faculty position that is going to pay them upwards of $200K and you would think that life would be pretty sweet for said person right now... However by the look on their face and by their tone of voice in responding to questions asked during the presentation, life seemed to be anything but grand... They honestly looked like they wanted to be literally any place in the world but there sharing their 'ground breaking' research with the captive audience... I followed up with one of the PhD students in the crowd afterwords and asked a little bit about the process and they told me that the coursework is really challenging but it's not that applicable to accounting research (especially the micro stuff) so if you can just 'power through it' you should be fine BUT if you are not extremely motivated to do accounting research you will probably be pretty miserable.

Your responses have been very helpful. Your definitely in a bit of a bind but also very fortunate to have so many options... Speaking from personal experience working in industry as a CPA seems like a no win situation if your bright and motivated. You work in public (which i've done) which is nothing short of a miserable experience where you're basically treated like slave labor. You are viewed as an expendable piece of garbage by partners who don't care one iota about you and can barely even remember your name... Their only real concern is satisfying some weekly billable hours quota and kissing client keister. Your peers are backstabbing, catty, and competitive. Aside from the occasional happy hour in a fun city there is not much to look forward to here. Or you work in corporate (which i've also done!) and you are largely surrounded by grumpy middle age people that spend their entire day complaining about their diseases, children, and grand children... Half your day is spent 'pretending' to look busy and trying to justify your existence when your supervisor walks by all while you sit there wanting to gouge your eye out with your pencil due to complete and utter boredom. Furthermore, your employment is much much more tenuous. In corporate, companies will have a sudden change in management and they will decide on a whim that they don't need certain staff and just start reducing head count to cut costs irrespective of performance. You find yourself defending a job you don't even like or care about... Just my 2-cents on industry. My guess is that as a PhD student (this I obviously have not done) you have almost no free time ever and you live barely above the poverty level BUT hopefully you are studying things that you find challenging and interesting and you get the opportunity to be creative and investigate issues and explore ideas that are of at least some interest to you. But only you can speak to this... Can you elaborate a little bit about the culture in an accounting PhD program. Is it basically just a non-stop grind for the 4 to 5 years that you are in the program with no end in site or after the coursework faze (i know you are not there yet) does it appear that the dissertation faze have more 'normal' hours. What are you hating more, the inability to grasp the ideas behind a paper (e.g., methodology) or the hours of time spent each day on the program largely in a solitary environment? Do the PhD students have any comradery or is it just basically a non-stop year round grind for the entirety of the program largely spent in solitude? Are the competitive?

Great response. I think many applicants in accounting have many of the same concerns that you are stating... Does your work experience in industry help much once your in the program or is it not really that useful? Was your decision to accept admissions at your current school driven largely by rankings? How much did you have to 'sell' yourself to the program to gain admission? Do you think that if you had gone to a less prestigious school the outcome may have been different? How much pressure is there on you to place at another top research school after completion of the PhD? Does the option to place at a lower ranked school or a more teaching oriented school exist or is the faculty strongly opposed to this given their high caliber status in academia?

Hey Demoralized, a few questions about your background: How strong was your math and econ background when you entered to the program? You referenced having worked in industry prior to commencing the PhD program. Were you working in the public accounting field before you entered the PhD program (i.e. as a CPA)? If so, you actually strongly enjoyed that more than the PhD program!? How much time and thought did you put into applying before you actually applied? Did you have any formal experience conducting academic research before you started the program? Are your classmates in the seminars seem like geniuses, like when they read a paper they just 'get it' on the first pass? I am curious about these things because there are others out there like you contemplating whether leaving industry to pursue a PhD would be the right 'fit' for them as well so your thoughts are appreciated...

Given that the discussion has morphed into a debate about the potential of brick and mortar higher education being replaced with online education you know it is only fitting that I chime in... :glee: As many of you witnessed, many of the same concerns that Stagename is raising was already discussed in my lengthy post entitled 'Is an Accounting PhD all that its Cracked up to Be'. I think it's pretty obvious that sooner rather than later higher education is going to go through some pretty drastic transformations despite what some of you detractors have to say. Another key driver of this is what MIT has cooking up in the pipeline: MITx. which is basically a spin off of their current Open Courseware format. The difference being that they are trying to make the experience more interactive and will be granting a certificate of completion for courses. Basically saying that the virtual course attendee 'completed' and acquired skills xyz. So if we run with the assumption that higher education is going to go through some pretty drastic changes in the near future, I think the main question lingering on every PhD in business attendee or potential admit is the following: If I graduate and there is no tenure track academic job, what can I do with a PhD in accounting? A PhD in marketing? M.I.T. Game-Changer: Free Online Education For All - Forbes