PhD Curriculum
Required Courses. The core or required classes for the Ph.D. in Business Administration with an emphasis in marketing program typically consist of four doctoral seminars in marketing, two summer directed study courses, and three elective seminar courses to complete a minor, five research methods/statistics courses, and one economics course.
Doctoral Seminars in Marketing:
- Distribution Channels
- Marketing Models
- Marketing Theory and Methods
- Marketing Strategy
Elective Seminars from:
- Business
- Development of Management Thought
- Global Business and the Environment
- Organization Theory
- Organization Impacts of Information Technology Management of Technological Innovation
- Computer-Mediated Communication and Decision Making
or
- Marketing related disciplines
- Psychology
- Sociology
- Economics
- Geography
- Industrial Engineering
All of the courses mentioned above are three hour/credit courses. Hence, the doctoral seminars constitute a total of 21 hours/credits, and the total coursework requirement constitutes a total of 45 hours/credits. Substitutions can be made with approval of the Ph.D. program coordinator.
Research Readiness Component. To complete this component, the student is required to take a doctoral seminar in research methods, plus two directed study courses focusing on research. These directed study courses are the same ones mentioned above in the Required Courses section. In addition, the doctoral seminar in research methods will count towards the five-course research methods/statistics course requirement.
Other Course Work and Prerequisites. The University of Oklahoma doctoral program requires 90 hours/credits beyond the bachelor's degree. A maximum of 30 hours/credits can be devoted to the student's dissertation. This stipulation implies that a student devotes about 60 hours to completing (non-dissertation) course requirements. Required doctoral seminars and research readiness component courses add up to 30 hours/credits (as discussed above), so an additional 30 hours/credits of courses are required beyond the bachelor's degree level. Of course, students who enter the program with a master's degree will have already completed coursework that partially satisfies this requirement. Remaining hours/credits are met by enrolling in courses in the fundamental disciplines of economics, psychology and statistics.
These requirements translate to roughly 2 years of courses for students entering with an MBA and 3 years of courses for students entering without an MBA. At that point, the student takes his/her general examination and begins his/her dissertation research.
