UA Business School Among Top Producers of Doctoral Grads Reaching Top Teaching Posts

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – An article in the Journal of Applied Finance places The University of Alabama’s finance department among the top two dozen or so universities producing doctoral graduates who go on to attain titled positions in finance education. Professors reach these levels, the article notes, in “recognition of their outstanding accomplishments in research and/or teaching.”

“This is quite a compliment to the finance department in graduating so many solid academic researchers and teachers,” said Dr. J. Barry Mason, dean of the Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration.

The article was researched and written by Ravindra Kamath, professor of finance, and Heidi Hylton Meier, professor of accounting, at Cleveland State University.

The article examines data of five academic years between 1994 and 2003. During the first period, 1994-1995, The University of Alabama was grouped with Columbia, Rochester and North Carolina. Each school granted the highest level degrees to five finance professors who held titled positions.

The University of Chicago led the list with 26, followed by MIT with 14, Pennsylvania with 12, Indiana and UCLA with eight each, Harvard, Michigan, Stanford and Texas at Austin, seven each, Northwestern, Ohio State and Wisconsin at six each. Following Alabama’s group were Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Princeton and Purdue with four each.

Alabama remained in the top 22 schools in 1996-97, 1998-1999, 2000-2201, but fell out of the group in 2002-2003. The University of Chicago graduated the largest number of titled professor throughout the study period, accounting for 10-11 percent. The study notes that more than 70 percent of all titled professors of finance in 2002-2003 were trained by just 24 universities.

“This accomplishment is even more remarkable considering, as this article also points out, that private universities produced more than 40 percent of the titled finance professors in each period of the study,” Mason said.