Prestige and Placement in Accounting Academia: Putting Women and Minorities in Their Places...?

• In Event: SESSION 1B: Diversity Issues in Accounting

Abstract

This study evaluates and ranks U.S. accounting doctoral programs on the basis of the prestige of their graduates’ placements. Furthermore, these placements are examined for gender and minority differences.

This study identifies some interesting trends that require further study: For example, women at lower ranked programs place more often in doctoral departments than men. Conversely, men at many high ranked programs place more often in doctoral programs than women. More generally, the placement rates by gender differ widely for many doctoral granting institutions. Since the pattern is mixed, the old arguments that women are choosing lower ranked employment for family reasons, etc. do not seem a sufficient explanatory starting point.

With regard to minorities, the first obvious conclusion is too many doctoral programs have not graduated a single minority in recent years. For those schools which have trained minority doctoral accountants, the patterns of placement of minorities are very different than non-minorities for many doctoral programs. Clearly, some schools place minority graduates better than non-minorities graduates. Is this explained simply by the demand for minority graduates in a profession with so few of them? The solution hardly seems this simplistic given the number of schools which place their minority graduates in doctoral departments so much less frequently than their non-minority graduates.

Authors

• Amelia A Baldwin, University of Arkansas - Fort Smith

• Rebecca Grasser, Lakeland Community College