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The Ph.D racket, accounting version

April 27, 2009

Dan Meyer asks Who Will Teach Future Accountants? over at Tickmarks.

Not many people who actually have been successful at accounting.

While practitioners can get part-time gigs or low-paying instructorships at many universities, getting a job that actually pays the sort of salary that might make it attractive to a burnt-out practitioner is much more difficult. The well-paid tenure track positions are reserved for PhDs. To get a doctorate, you pretty much have to quit your job and spend five years studying statistics and doing academic hocus-pocus. By that time you'd be broke and have lost the current practice skills that would be a practitioner's best teaching strength.

Dan reports on an AICPA program to bring in new PhDs:

The AICPA has created the Accounting Doctoral Scholars (ADS) program at a cost exceeding $16 million. The goal is to produce 30 extra doctoral students per year and allow them a living (if somewhat spartan) stipend of $30,000 per year while taking doctoral studies.

So instead of a 100% pay cut, a would-be accounting prof would take a 70-80% pay cut as his practice skills atrophy while going through the PhD. grind. I don't think that's enough. It won't change as long as universities would rather shortchange their students than weaken the PhD barrier to entry.

Tags: Accounting education.

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