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Wednesday, May 16, 2012 | 3:16 PM CDT

PhD in Accounting Handbook

This document outlines the requirements for the PhD in Accounting that are incremental to the requirements within Mays Business School and Texas A&M University. The student should be familiar with all the rules and procedures at the university, college, and department levels.

Residence and credit hour requirements

The student must maintain residency status at least through admission to candidacy. Admission to candidacy requires the completion of course work, completion of the comprehensive exams, and the filing of an acceptable dissertation proposal with the Office of Graduate Studies.

Advising (initial)

The prerequisite requirements in the Department of Accounting are presented below:

Economics: Six credit hours of advanced graduate economic theory courses.

Accounting: It is anticipated that entering PhD students will have an undergraduate degree in accounting (or its equivalent). The following graduate or undergraduate courses may, at the discretion of the doctoral advisor, be required in order to make up any deficiencies in a student's accounting training:

Statistics: Graduate level elementary statistics.

Program requirements

Incoming doctoral students prepare a tentative degree program in consultation with the doctoral student advisor. This program identifies specific courses to be completed and when they are to be completed.

The following outlines the major field, quantitative tool, and minor course work requirements. Please note that these should be viewed as minimum program requirements and may be expanded as appropriate by the student and the student's advisory committee.

Major field

The following courses are required:

At least two PhD seminars within Mays Business School must be taken beyond the required seminars ACCT 665, ACCT 660, and ACCT 688 (at least four of the total five seminars must be successfully completed prior to sitting for the comprehensive examination). Research Methodology I is a prerequisite for all other seminars. The nature and content of these seminars will vary with faculty and student interests and abilities.

Recently offered or planned seminars include:

Quantitative research tool

A 15-hour quantitative tool is required from econometrics and statistics (beyond STAT 651 and STAT 652). Courses qualifying for completing the 15-hour tool requirement include:

Other courses qualify at the discretion of the doctoral program advisor or the student's advisory committee chair.

Minor field

The research methods minor field is designed to assure that students have the requisite knowledge and skill to conduct independent research. Minor courses do not necessarily need to come from a single academic department, but should represent a comprehensive research area which supports the student's primary research. A minimum of 9 hours of course work must be completed in a comprehensive research area. A minor area requires a representative on the student's committee.

Minor courses should be selected in consultation with the doctoral program advisor and/or the student's advisory committee. While no specific courses are required for the various minors, minor course work should include doctoral level courses and other appropriate courses in the minor specialty area.

Performance standards

The grading standards within the Department of Accounting are significantly more rigid than the university requirements. Any student that receives two C's while in the program will be recommended to the Office of Graduate Studies for automatic dismissal.

Annual review

The PhD Policy Committee will review the performance of each PhD student at the end of the first and second years in the program. This process will be based on grades to date and completed questionnaires from faculty conducting PhD seminars and other courses. The purpose of the review is to provide faculty and students additional information on the progress of each student toward completing degree requirements. Students with significant deficiencies will be reviewed after each semester.

First-year paper

A major requirement in the course work stage of our program is the first-year paper. Each student will prepare a single-authored research paper under the direction of a one or two member faculty committee. In late spring/early summer of the first year the student should identify an initial topic or area of interest. He or she should then recruit one or two faculty members (ideally faculty with some degree of interest in the topic) to serve on the committee. The student will register for an Independent Study course (ACCT 685) during the first summer semester of the student's program under the direction of the recruited faculty members.

Upon completion of these initial steps, the student should then inform the PhD program coordinator of the initial topic (or area of interest) and the name of the recruited faculty member for approval. The final paper should be completed, including receiving committee approval, and presenting the paper in a departmental workshop by the end of the student's second fall semester in the program. Failure to complete the first-year paper in a timely fashion could result in loss of assistantship, placement on probation, or dismissal from the program.

Workshop program

Active participation in the workshop program is an essential component of the doctoral program in accounting. The workshop program provides a forum for visiting scholars, faculty and doctoral students to share and nurture research ideas. Each student's first-year paper, and proposal will be presented in a scheduled departmental workshop. All students are expected to actively participate in the workshop program while they are in residence by asking questions and providing constructive suggestions during each workshop.

Dissertation research proposal defense

When the advisory committee is satisfied that a viable dissertation proposal has been developed, a proposal defense is scheduled for presentation in a departmental workshop. It is expected that all advisory committee members will be in attendance at the proposal workshop. A discussant should be assigned at the proposal defense to provide constructive criticism to the student.