Is PhD in Business a super MBA?

sakky
Tue, 09 May 2006 14:50:17 +0000

Why spend two more years in school? It’s two years more of tuition, and you don’t get more pay when you graduate.



Well, I don’t agree with this. Almost all PhD’s in business (as in almost any other field) are funded. So not only do you not have to pay them, they actually pay you (although they pay you only a pittance, it’s better than making “negative salary” by paying tuition). You may have to work as a TA or an RA, but the point is, doctoral students rarely if ever have to pay tuition.

Nevertheless, it is still true that it doesn’t make any real financial sense to prefer an MBA over a PhD. After all, if the only thing on your mind is money, then just get your MBA from Wharton or Harvard and just go become a Wall Street investment banker. You would make far more money doing that than you ever would as a business academic. You should pursue the PhD in business only because you really care about research.



IF YOU HAVE PHD IN BUSINESS
IS IT STILL RESPECTABLE AS MBA IN THE “INDUSTRY” NOT ACADEMIA

like if having a phD… do companies still like that… or do they view it not relevant to that of mba



If anything, the PhD is almost certainly “worse” than the MBA, except for certain industries (notably consulting). That’s because the business PhD strongly signals that you are interested in research and academia. If you get a business PhD, companies will rightfully wonder why you are now pursuing an industry job. Is it because you just couldn’t get a faculty position and are just pursuing an industry job as a “backup plan”? If a faculty position opens up later, are you just going to quit your job to take it? These are legitimate questions that a business doctorate will elicit. No company wants to feel that you may quit in a few months or a year time because some tenure-track assistant professor position will open up later.



even though phD is higher… is it mba + morestuff (does it include curriculum-wise all the mba stuff
or different…



It is completely different. The doctoral classes are far more theoretical and research oriented, whereas the MBA classes are generally practical and geared towards people going right back into industry.



Would you say that most B school professors had MBA’s before they got their Ph.D’s?



No. Pick any prominent B-school, look at the CV’s of the profs, and you will note that most do not have MBA’s.



Wouldn’t most of the professors have a lot of practical experience? For example, I would like it better if the professor teaching me finance actually worked in finance.



Maybe that’s the way it should be, but that certainly is not the way that it is. Again, check out the CV’s of the profs at any B-school, and you will notice that many of them (probably most of them) have only limited practical experience. Some of them have no experience at all and got their PhD’s straight out of undergrad.