PhD Program Requirements

Prerequisites for admission to the Ph.D. program are a minimum of one (preferably two) calculus courses, an introductory statistics course, and intermediate-level microeconomic theory. Assuming that students enroll for ten hours a semester, the course work requirements can be completed in two and one-half years (five semesters). The sixth semester (winter of the third year) is spent preparing for and taking the comprehensive written examinations and the fourth year in writing the research thesis. The University of Missouri requires 72 total hours of course work beyond a baccalaureate degree. Specific course work requirements are:

1. 12 hours in doctoral-level accounting research courses;
2. 15 hours of course work in supporting theoretical fields;
3. 18 hours of course work in research tools (statistics, research design, quantitative methods);
4. A minimum of 7 hours dissertation enrollment in ACCT 491: Research in Accounting.

Accounting Requirements. Students are required to take three research seminars: financial accounting (Acct. 466), auditing (Acct. 444), and behavioral research in accounting (Acct. 467). In addition, students enroll in Acct. 460 while completing the first-year summer paper (see section 3).

Supporting Field. Students are required to take 15 hours in a supporting field. There is flexibility in tailoring each student's program, though generally the choices come from the fields of economics, finance, organizational behavior, or cognitive psychology.

Research Tools. Students are required to take Economics 370: Introduction to Quantitative Economics, and Statistics 385: Regression, or Statistics 395: ANOVA. In addition, a minimum of four advanced courses related to the student's program emphasis is required. Students will typically select either an empirical emphasis or an experimental emphasis and take appropriate courses (econometrics, statistics, experiemental research design, and analysis of variance).

Friday Afternoon Seminars. An important part of learning research skills is participating in research workshop presentations. The School of Accountancy has a weekly research seminar that meets on Friday afternoons to discuss current research-in-progress presented by faculty and Ph.D. students, and by invited faculty from other universities. Attendance is required at these seminars, and written critiques of selected papers may also be required.

Dissertation Hours. The University requires a minimum enrollment of two credit hours per semester and one credit hour per semester in Acct. 491 to maintain full-time enrollment in the Ph.D. program after completing compulsory course work requirements and comprehensive exams. This enrollment continues through the semester of dissertation defense.