More on seeking an Accounting Ph.D.

To compete for a tenured faculty line at a major research university you have to do research. You have to like to teach and you have to like to write and you have to be pretty good at both of them. My recommendation is to start by reading some papers like the following to learn more about what an academic career is like.

Beyer, B., D. Herrmann, G. K. Meek and E. T. Rapley. 2010. What it means to be an accounting professor: A concise career guide for doctoral students in accounting. Issues In Accounting Education (May): 227-244.

Hermanson, D. R. 2008. What I have learned so far: Observations on managing an academic accounting career. Issues In Accounting Education (February): 53-66.

If an academic career sounds interesting, visit some Ph.D. programs and talk to the faculty and the Ph.D. students. Ask a lot of questions, e.g., Will you have to teach during the program? What sort of financial support do they have available? What is expected of Ph.D. students? In Ph.D. seminars there is little or no lecture and lots of student participation is required.

Then I recommend getting a masters degree (although you don't need one to get into a Ph.D. program) followed by a full or part time teaching position at some school (a community college for example) to see if you like to teach. If you like to teach an academic career might be just what your are looking for. If you don't want to do research there are lots of four year colleges where the teaching load is 12 hours per semester and the research requirement is low to zero. Those schools don't pay as well as the major research universities, but there are more teaching positions available at that level.

I developed a summary of the Beyer, Meek and Rapley paper mentioned above. There is a very interesting table in the paper that indicates the teaching and research expectations of faculty at different types of schools. See http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumBeyer2010.htm