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Baldwin and Brown                                                                                                                                                       Advances in Business Research 

                                                                                                                                                                                               2012, Vol. 3, No. 1, 36-42 

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Accounting Doctoral Placement: A Geographic Analysis 
 

Amelia Baldwin, University of Arkansas - Fort Smith 

Carol Brown, Oregon State University 
 

 

Accounting doctoral placement is described according to the geography of graduate employment. The results show 

that most U.S. programs provide graduates to schools in the state or the region. Since many doctoral programs 
prefer to place their graduates in high ranking research programs or in other doctoral schools, geographic 

concentration suggests many of them are serving a regional need, rather than placing graduates at the highest 

(research ranked) schools. Additionally, many programs have a relatively high level of foreign placements. Whether 

these foreign placements add to the prestige of the program is unknown, but they do not help combat the U.S. 

accounting doctoral shortage. 
 

 

The geographic aspects of employment of accounting doctoral graduates has not been explored in previous 

studies. Yet, some would argue the accounting professoriate already knows that some programs tend to provide 

graduates almost exclusively to employer schools within their state or geographic region. Interestingly, no one has 

quantified which schools or how many schools tend to do this. Research has been focused, rather, on the prestige of 

placements, without regard to other potentially intervening factors. Given that the prestige or ranking of a doctoral 

program can be influenced by the placement of its graduates, the geographical placement tendencies may, in fact, 

reduce the potential ranking of a doctoral program, except, of course, if all the employer schools in the same 

geographic region are highly ranked, which seems unlikely. 

Accounting doctoral programs are often evaluated and ranked based on the initial placement of graduates. While 

initial placement is particularly important, the long term employment situations of graduates may actually be more 

indicative of program quality since many doctoral graduates are mobile and do not stay in their initial job for their 

entire career or even beyond tenure. Clearly, the variables that can give insight into a doctoral graduate placement 

are far more diverse than simply the initial placement of a program's graduates. Because the choice to attend a PhD 

program is complex and the means of evaluating doctoral programs are varied, a geographical analysis of doctoral 

graduate placement may be useful to both potential doctoral students and also to accreditors and institutions who 

may hire these graduates. 

This study describes and analyzes U.S. doctoral accounting program placement using a variety of demographic 

and geographic data about the programs and their most recent graduates. This information (including graduate 

gender and minority statues, placement, etc.) may be particularly useful to doctoral applicants as well as to doctoral 

program directors or search committees looking to differentiate or benchmark programs.  

This study addresses the following broad research questions: What are the drivers of doctoral graduate 

placement? What is the role of geography in the pattern of doctoral graduate placement, if any? To what extent do 

each program's graduates leave academia or leave the USA? 
 

Prior Research 
 

The literature describing accounting doctoral programs is mostly comprised of various studies ranking programs 

on publishing output of faculty and/or graduates or on initial placement of graduates. The publishing productivity 

studies that rank accounting doctoral programs have measured research activity of both faculty and graduates.  

These studies include Brown and Garner (1985), Brown (1996), Everett, Klamm and Stoltzfus (2004), and Brown 

and Laksmana (2007). Similarly, Mittermaier (1991) analyzed representation on editorial boards. Fogarty and 

Markarian (2007) combined two previous rankings (Hasselback and Reinstein, 1995b; Fogarty, 1995) to create a 

prestige ranking of doctoral granting programs. Urbancic (2008) used a multi-attribute approach to rank doctoral 

programs. 

 Studies of placement of doctoral accounting graduates include Fogarty and Saftner (1993a, 1993b), Maranto and 

Streuly (1994), Fogarty and Ruhl (1997), Stammerjohan and Hall (2002), and Stammerjohan, Seifert and Guidry 

(2009). These are briefly described here. 

 Stammerjohan and Hall (2002) ranked 80 accounting doctoral programs based on the initial placement of 

graduates using two measurement scales: US News and World Report: America’s Best Colleges (1997) rankings and 

Hasselback and Reinstein (1995a) research productivity measures. The authors address placement of graduates at 

top-tier universities and at the most research productive accounting departments. 



Baldwin and Brown                                                                                                                                                       Advances in Business Research 

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 Fogarty and Saftner (1993a) consider a primary market (initial placement) for doctoral graduates and a 

secondary market (later employment) for accounting professors who have already held full-time positions. The 

primary market is more dependent on institutional characteristics, whereas the secondary market is influenced more 

by personal, family and economic motives. The authors conclude that a fairly solid stratification hierarchy exists and 

that movement along this hierarchy is mostly downward. 

 Maranto and Streuly (1994), Fogarty and Ruhl (1997) found strong correlations between the status of doctoral 

alma mater institutions and the status of initial employment institutions. Stammerjohan, Seifert and Guidry (2009) 

further examine the prestige of doctoral granting programs and lifestyle choices in the initial placement of graduates. 

Most of these studies have only addressed a subset of accounting doctoral programs. Most of these studies consider 

only initial placement. None of these studies addresses the geographical of accounting doctoral graduate placement. 

 Both research output and placement information are important. Just as Stammerjohan and Hall (2002) argue that 

potential doctoral students need to know if the programs to which they apply have a history of placing graduates at 

the type of institutions where they desire future employment, these applicants may also want to know more about 

programs with regard to many other factors, including further characteristics of graduates' employment and success. 

Therefore, this study's purpose is to provide prospective doctoral students, search committees, doctoral program 

directors, and other interested parties with information that has not been previously available about doctoral 

graduate placement. 
 

Research Methodology 
 

This section describes the research methodology used to investigate the geographic patterns in doctoral graduate 

placement. The basic data consist of U.S. accounting doctoral graduates, 1987-2006. These graduates were initially 

identified through Hasselback's (2007) online listing of doctoral graduates by school. This source contains 

information about each graduate such as academic rank, employer, administrative position, professorships, and 

professional certifications. Then, each individual graduate was researched to update, correct, and add supplemental 

variables. Extensive Internet searches, phone calls and emails enabled the collection of corrections and additional 

information. Variables describing graduates include current employment (2007), alma mater, degree year, minority 

status, country, and state (if USA).   

 Information on minority status was provided by the PhD Project (2007). The minority information was double 

checked through Internet searches and emails. For the purposes of this research, minorities are identified as African-

American, Native American, and Hispanic American. These are recognized as under-represented minorities and are 

those specifically encouraged by the PhD Project (2007) to pursue doctorates in business disciplines. The data were 

cross-checked to the extent possible through Internet searches. 

 The location (country or state) of each graduate was determined based on their place of employment or other 

information about their current activities found on the Internet or through email and phone inquiries. Note that 

information is unknown or inapplicable on some variables for some graduates. For example, 2007 employer is 

unknown for 9.8% of graduates. 

The state location of doctoral programs and current (2007) employment were used to determine how frequently 

graduates are employed in the same state as their doctoral program, or in bordering states. In addition, the 

employment locations of minority graduates was compared with census data on minorities. Finally, foreign 

placements are discussed. The data were analyzed using basic descriptive statistics. The following sections discuss 

the results and their implications. 
 

Results 
 

This section discusses the geography of doctoral graduate placement in current employment (2007), including 

dispersion of graduates across the U.S. and the percent of foreign placements. Basic demographics are shown in the 

accompanying tables. 
 

Geography of Current Placement 
 

Of the graduates who are employed at U.S. academic institutions, about 20% (503) are employed in the same 

state in which they earned their doctoral degrees. Table 1 describes this geographical phenomenon. Of the 94 

programs, 58 (62%) have more of their graduates in their home state than in any other state. An additional 16 

programs (17%) have more of their graduates in a bordering state than in any other state. About 10% of programs 

(9) have too few graduates to analyze geographic patterns. Only 11 programs (12%) appear to avoid an obvious 

geographical bias in the current employment of their graduates: Arkansas, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, 



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MIT, Northwestern, Penn, Purdue, Stanford, and SUNY-Buffalo. Three of these (MIT, Purdue and SUNY-Buffalo) 

have graduated less than one student per year for the study period. Most of these programs have placed their 

graduates in states with larger populations and therefore more accounting programs, such as California, New York, 

Virginia, and Texas. 
 

Table 1: Geographical Analysis of Graduate Employment 

Panel A. Largest Homestate Placement 
 

   Total State with largest    

  almamater Grads number of grads    

A
ll

 ALL 2517 <home> 503     

        

   Total State with largest  Total State with largest 

  almamater Grads number of grads almamater Grads number of grads 

H
o

m
es

ta
te

 h
as

 m
o

re
 g

ra
d

u
at

es
 t

h
an

 a
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 o

th
er

 s
ta

te
 

Alabama 34 AL 8 Minnesota 14 MN 2 

Baruch 16 NY 8 Nebraska 50 NE 8 

Berkeley 16 CA 4 NorthTx 50 TX 23 

BostonU 25 MA 13 NYU 24 NY 8 

CarMellon 8 PA 2 Oklahoma 21 OK 5 

CaseWes 10 OH 5 OklaSt 40 OK 5 

CenFla 12 FL 3 Oregon 20 OR 5 

Chicago 27 IL 5 PennSt 53 PA 9 

Cincinnati 13 OH 3 Pittsburgh 28 PA 8 

ClevSt 10 OH 3 sCalif 26 CA 7 

Columbia 22 NY 6 sFlorida 19 FL 8 

Cornell 24 NY 3 sIllinois 20 IL 3 

Drexel 25 PA 8 SUNY-Bin 4 NY 2 

FlaAtl 6 FL 3 Syracuse 11 NY 5 

Florida 36 FL 8 Temple 27 PA 6 

GaState 34 GA 6 Tennessee 40 TN 8 

Georgia 56 GA 8 TxA&M 80 TX 24 

Harvard 14 MA 3 Tx-Arlin 19 TX 5 

Houston 47 TX 15 Tx-Austin 60 TX 15 

Illinois 51 IL 15 TxTech 39 TX 13 

Iowa 24 IA 4 UCLA 3 CA 2 

JacksonSt 6 MS 4 Union-NY 10 NY 6 

Kansas 16 KS 2 Utah 22 UT 5 

KentSt 35 OH 8 VaComm 33 VA 14 

Kentucky 58 KY 7 Vanderbilt 1 TN 1 

LSU 47 LA 9 WA (u of) 36 WA 8 

Mass 15 MA 7 WashSt 21 WA 3 

Memphis 33 TN 5 WashU 9 MO 2 

MichSt 54 MI 8 Wisconsin 50 WI 13 

 

 Apparently, most programs are fulfilling a role, whether intentional or unintentional, of providing accounting 

doctoral graduates mostly to schools within their geographical area. This is true for most doctoral programs whether 

large or small, highly ranked or otherwise, and regardless of location. This could be caused by any number of 

factors, including graduates who do not want to leave the area for personal or family reasons, high demand in the 

region for the program's graduates, or the proximity of many doctoral programs to high concentrations of population 

and other accounting institutions. To the extent doctoral programs want to be distinguished by their good placement 

records, they may want to investigate this variable further. Certainly, prospective doctoral students may use this data 

to help them determine whether the program is likely to result in placements that fit their needs. 
 

Geography and Minorities 
 

In the U.S. and Puerto Rico, 5.48% of placements are minority graduates. The 19 states (including Puerto Rico 

and the District of Columbia) with above average minority employment are listed in Table 2. Thirteen of these 

locations can be described as southern (i.e. south of the Mason-Dixon line or geographically southern (Puerto Rico). 

Two of these states are northeastern: Rhode Island and New Jersey. Four are mid-western or western: Michigan, 

Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico. Note that some of the states that have relatively large populations of minorities 

(such as California) and relatively large numbers of universities employing accounting doctoral graduates (such as 

New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Ohio) do not show above average employment of minorities. 



Baldwin and Brown                                                                                                                                                       Advances in Business Research 

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Note that Table 2 only shows states with above average minority employment, not all states and all employed 

minorities or non-minorities. 
 

Table 2: States with above average minority employment 
 

State None-Minority Minority Total Minority% 

Puerto Rico 0 2 2 100.00% 

Delaware 5 2 7 28.57% 

D.C. 19 4 23 17.39% 

South Carolina 32 5 37 13.51% 

Kansas 20 3 23 13.04% 

Mississippi 36 5 41 12.20% 

Rhode Island 15 2 17 11.76% 

Florida 96 12 108 11.11% 

Maryland 26 3 29 10.34% 

Georgia 72 8 80 10.00% 

North Carolina 103 11 114 9.65% 

Kentucky 37 3 40 7.50% 

Virginia 83 6 89 6.74% 

West Virginia 14 1 15 6.67% 

Texas 215 14 229 6.11% 

Colorado 32 2 34 5.88% 

New Mexico 16 1 17 5.88% 

Michigan 67 4 71 5.63% 

New Jersey 51 3 54 5.56% 

Total (all) 2,398 139 2,537 5.48% 

 

Table 3: Graduate placement, programs with above average foreign placement 
 

Program Total Foreign Program Total Foreign 
Georgia Tech 3 67% Wisconsin 66 21% 

UCLA 10 60% Northwestern 30 20% 

Florida Int'l 2 50% Oregon 25 20% 

Carnegie Mellon 17 47% Iowa 31 19% 

Berkeley 32 47% Boston U 32 19% 

Purdue 28 43% Maryland 32 19% 

Case Western 17 41% Houston 60 18% 

Tulane 8 38% Florida 44 18% 

SUNY-Buffalo 19 37% Rutgers 39 18% 

Minnesota 27 33% Chicago 34 18% 

NYU 37 32% Southern Cal 34 18% 

Syracuse 16 31% Cornell 29 17% 

Florida Atlantic 10 30% Arkansas 42 17% 

CUNY Baruch 22 27% Drexel 30 17% 

Kansas 22 27% Duke 6 17% 

Penn 26 27% St Louis 19 16% 

Southern Illinois 27 26% Texas-Austin 70 16% 

Illinois 66 24% Temple 32 16% 

Harvard 17 24% Cleveland St 13 15% 

Stanford 34 24% Oklahoma 26 15% 

Washington, U of 48 23% Nebraska 59 15% 

Colorado 35 23% Ohio State 48 15% 

GWU 18 22% Kent St 42 14% 

Texas-Dallas 9 22%    

 

Foreign Employment 
 

Approximately 15% of the graduates whose location is known are employed outside of the USA (see Table 3 

above). Four programs (of those with at least 20 in the subset) have placed over 30% of their graduates outside the 

USA. These include Berkeley, Purdue, Minnesota and NYU. A further 11 programs (of those with at least 20 in the 

subset) have placed over 20% of their graduates outside the USA. These include Kansas, Pennsylvania, Southern 

Illinois, Stanford, Washington, Colorado, Illinois, Wisconsin, Baruch, Iowa, and Northwestern. Since the 

whereabouts of some graduates are unknown and some of these unknowns are likely to be in foreign countries, these 

percentages may be understated. 



Baldwin and Brown                                                                                                                                                       Advances in Business Research 

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  Many of these programs may have high foreign placement because a higher percentage of foreign students are 

admitted. Clearly, a significant portion of doctoral students are from outside the USA. For example, Cho et al. 

(2008) report that the percentage of Chinese students at the American Accounting Association Doctoral Consortium 

has been increasing in recent years and that over 25% of attendees during 2002-2004 received bachelor’s degrees 

from Chinese universities.  

 Some accounting doctoral programs may be more attractive to foreign students due to location or rank or some 

other factor. The data do not include a variable for country of citizenship. Clearly, however, a material percentage of 

U.S. accounting doctoral graduates are leaving the country, thus potentially aggravating the shortage situation. Some 

of these graduates may be foreigners who never intended to stay in the U.S., of course. The market for doctoral 

students and doctoral graduates is complex. 
 

Conclusion 
 

This study's purpose was to provide prospective doctoral students, doctoral program directors, search 

committees, and other interested parties with geographical information about doctoral placement that has not been 

previously available. Hopefully, this information will assist potential applicants to doctoral programs in making 

decisions about where to apply and which program to attend.   

This information may also be useful for accounting doctoral programs desiring differentiation from other 

programs using objective data. In addition, this information may provide doctoral programs with some benchmarks 

against which progress over time can be compared. Search committees, accreditation agencies, and other external 

parties may use this data to help in benchmarking and comparison of programs. Prior research has shown that high 

placement by doctoral graduates vastly improves their ability to perform well in their academic career (Fogarty et al. 

2011). 

This study does have some limitations. Some data are unknown, particularly, the employment situations of some 

graduates could not be determined (these were not used in the analysis). In addition, the employment information is 

analyzed at a point in time, 2007. This is both a weakness and a strength. It is a weakness because it is a snapshot in 

time and employment situations change, and a strength because it addresses employment situations for graduates at a 

range of 1 to 20 years post-graduation rather than just the initial employment of each graduate. Future studies should 

consider initial placement of doctoral graduates. Furthermore, while a longitudinal study is beyond the scope of this 

project, in the future such a study may provide more insight into the movement and employment of doctoral 

graduates. 

These results suggest most U.S. doctoral programs mainly provide graduates to schools in the state or the region. 

Since many doctoral programs prefer to place their graduates in the highest ranking programs possible or in other 

accounting doctoral programs, the geographic concentration suggests that many of them are serving a regional need, 

rather than placing graduates at the best schools, regardless of location. In addition, many programs have a relatively 

high level of foreign placements. Whether these foreign placements add to the prestige of the program is unknown. 

Clearly these placements do not help combat the U.S. accounting doctoral shortage. 

While this study provides interesting data and analysis, it also highlights areas needing more investigation. For 

example: Why do so many of the graduates of some programs leave the U.S.? Do doctoral programs intentionally 

serve a geographical demand or is that an unintentional result? Do doctoral programs with high state or regional 

placement tend to be ranked lower than doctoral programs with non-geographical patterns of placement? More 

research is necessary to shed light on these preliminary results, including comparisons of publishing productivity 

with geographic placement variables. 
 

REFERENCES 
 

AACSB International. 2003. Report of the doctoral faculty commission to AACSB international's board of 

directors.  Tampa, Florida: AACSB. 
 

AACSB International. 2009. Accreditation (website). Available online: http://www.aacsb.edu/accreditation. 
 

Brown, L. 1996. Influential accounting articles, individuals, PhD granting institutions and faculties: A citational 

analysis. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 21(7/8), 723-754. 
 

Brown, L., & Garner, J. 1985. Applying citation analysis to evaluate the research contributions of accounting faculty 

and doctoral programs. Accounting Review, 60(2), 262-277. 
 



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Brown, L., & Laksmana, I. 2007. Accounting Ph.D. program graduates: Affiliation performance and publication 

performance. Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, 29(3), 285-213. 
 

Cho, C., Roberts, R., & Roberts, S. 2008. Chinese students in US accounting and business PhD programs: 

Educational, political and social considerations. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 19(2), 199-216. 
 

Everett, J., Klamm, B., & Stoltzfus, R. 2004. Developing benchmarks for evaluating publication records at doctoral 

programs in accounting. Journal of Accounting Education, 22(3), 229-252. 
 

Fogarty, T. 1995. A ranking to end all rankings: A meta-analysis and critique of studies ranking academic 

accounting departments. Accounting Perspectives, 1, 1-22. 
 

Fogarty, T., & Markarian, G. 2007. An empirical assessment of the rise and fall of accounting as an academic 

discipline. Issues in Accounting Education, 22(2), 137-161. 
 

Fogarty, T., & Ruhl, J. 1997. Institutional antecedents of accounting faculty research productivity. Issues in 

Accounting Education, (Spring), 28-48. 
 

Fogarty, T., & Saftner, D. 1993a. Down the up staircase: US academic accounting prestige and the placement of 

doctoral students. Accounting Education, 2(2), 93-100. 
 

Fogarty, T., & Saftner, D. 1993b. Academic department prestige: A new measure based on the doctoral labor 

market. Research in Higher Education, 34(4), 427-449. 
 

Fogarty, T., Saftner, D., & Hasselback, J. 2011. Knowing one’s place: The distribution of new accounting academics 

into a segmented labor market. Journal of Accounting Education, 29 (2-3), 89-99. 
 

Hasselback, J. 2007. Listing of Doctoral Graduates by School. http://www.jrhasselback.com/AtgDoct/XSchDoct. 

pdf. 
  
Hasselback, J., & Reinstein, A. 1995a. A proposal for measuring scholarly productivity of accounting faculty. Issues 

in Accounting Education, 10(2), 269-306. 
 

Hasselback, J., & Reinstein, A. 1995b. Assessing accounting doctoral programs by their graduates’ research 

productivity. Advances in Accounting, 13(1), 61-86. 
 

Maranto, C., & Streuly, C. 1994. The determinants of accounting professors’ publishing productivity in the early 

career. Contemporary Accounting Research, 10(2), 387-407. 
 

Mittermaier, L. 1991. Representation on the editorial boards of academic accounting journals: An analysis of 

accounting faculties and doctoral programs. Issues in Accounting Education, 6 (2), 221-238. 
 

PhDProject. 2007. (website). Available online: http://www.phdproject.org. 
 

Stammerjohan, W., Seifert, D., & Guidry, R. 2009. Factors affecting initial placement of accounting Ph.Ds. 

Advances in Accounting Education, 10, 103-118. 
 

Stammerjohan, W., & Hall, S. 2002. Evaluation of doctoral programs in accounting: An examination of placement. 

Journal of Accounting Education, 20 (1), 1-27. 
 

Urbancic, F. 2008. A multiattributes approach for ranking PhD programs. Journal of Education for Business, 83 

(6), 339 -346. 
 

 

Amelia Baldwin is the Neal Pendergraft professor of accounting at the University of Arkansas - Fort Smith. She 

received her Ph.D. in accounting & information systems from Virginia Tech. Her primary research areas are 

emerging technology impacts on accounting and accounting labor markets. She has published in British Accounting 

Review, European Accounting Review, Journal of Information Systems, International Journal of Auditing, Journal 

of Emerging Technologies in Accounting, Information Systems Management, International Journal of Accounting 



Baldwin and Brown                                                                                                                                                       Advances in Business Research 

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Information Systems, Advances in Public Interest Accounting, and Advances in Accounting Education, among 

others. 
 

Carol Brown recently retired as associate dean for programs in Oregon State University’s College of Business. She 

received her Ph.D. in computer science from Oregon State. Her primary research areas are emerging technologies 

and accounting labor markets. She has published in Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Emerging 

Technologies in Accounting, Expert Systems with Applications, Financial Counseling & Planning, Management 

Accounting, Journal of Accountancy, Accounting Education, Journal of Education for Business, Advances in 

Accounting Education, and Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance & Management, among many others. 

 


