PhD Foundation
Courses

College Admissions
Requirements

Dean's Executive
Advisory Board

College Web Site

College of Business Administration
Doctor of Philosophy

Foundation Course Work

Students who enter the doctoral program and who have neither a master's degree in business administration nor a Master of Science in Accountancy degree from an institution accredited at the graduate level by the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) must complete eight master's-level foundation courses (24 semester hours). Of these, three courses (nine semester hours) are required in the fundamental areas of quantitative methods and economics:

DISC 6360	Statistical Methods for Business
ECON 6375	Macroeconomic Analysis
ECON 6385	Microeconomic Analysis

The remaining five courses (15 semester hours) must be taken from within the College of Business Administration, but at least four of the courses (12 hours) must be taken outside the statistics and operations research area of DISC. Students may take no more than one of these five courses in the major field. In the absence of specific departmental requirements, the choice of these remaining courses must be approved either by the student's advisory committee or, in the absence of such a committee, by the departmental doctoral program coordinator.

A grade point average of 3.25 (A=4.00) must be achieved in the required courses to satisfy the foundation course requirements. Students must successfully complete DISC 6360, ECON 6375, and ECON 6385 within one year of the first enrollment in graduate course work. An extension of the time period requires prior approval from the department doctoral program coordinator; otherwise, students must reapply for admission to the doctoral program.

Students who complete course work equivalent to a foundation course with a grade of B or higher at another institution may be granted a waiver of the foundation course. Undergraduate credit may satisfy such equivalency; however, six hours of such credit is required to waive three hours of graduate credit. For both college and departmental requirements, students seeking waivers shall petition the department offering the required courses. Such petitions also require the approval of the doctoral program coordinator in the student's own department and the approval of the Office of Student Services.

Credit applied to satisfy foundation course requirements cannot be double-counted to satisfy any other college or departmental doctoral requirements.

All college foundation courses are automatically waived for students who have completed either an AACSB-accredited M.B.A. degree or an AACSB-accredited M.S. in Accountancy degree.