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A Doctor of Business Administration degree, or DBA, is the terminal degree in business. These degrees prepare graduates to work in academia, supervisory positions in a number of businesses, do scholarly research and publish it, and overall become a thought leader in the field of business.
Students can also opt for Ph.D.’s in Business which focus more on adding theoretical knowledge in the field, where the DBA is more directed towards innovation and leadership. Generally these degrees require 4 years of full-time study, however, they can be completed in less, as you’ll see from some of the schools on our ranking.
What Are Areas Of Specialization For DBA Degrees?
In DBA and Ph.D. in business programs, students will often specialize in areas like:
- Management science
- Information technology management
- Accounting
- Business intelligence
- Global operations
- Human resource management
- Organizational behavior
- Economics
- Finance
- Among other disciplines
Can I Get My DBA Online?
We focused on online degrees in our ranking, because they give students the opportunity to earn their DBA or Ph.D. without having to move, and generally allow them to maintain their ongoing work and life obligations. The programs on this list can be primarily online, but often do require some in-person residencies.
Whenever you find a school or program that seems like a good fit, you can request more information from advisors and support staff through the provided links. Schools are generally eager to help you get more information about the programs and in your application process.
DBA students take classes that build towards a thesis or dissertation. These consist of original academic research that may be published in peer-reviewed journals. Students also generally defend these dissertations or theses to a panel of experts to get them approved.
In order to receive a DBA or Ph.D. in business, you’ll likely need to meet a number of requirements, including working in the field for five or more years, having a Master’s degree, taking the GMAT or GRE, and maintaining strong grades throughout your educational career. Not all of these are hard requirements, and they are, of course, different from program to program.
DBA and Ph.D. programs in business are an excellent way to seriously boost your career in a number of areas within the field. You’ll separate yourself from other candidates for executive positions in many organizations, and be qualified for tenure-track positions as a professor or post-doctoral researcher.
So, how did we choose the programs on this ranking? You can find a detailed methodology for this ranking below.
Methodology
To rank the best online doctoral programs in Business, three key factors were identified: Affordable Tuition, Student Population, and Student Reviews via Niche. Schools were awarded points based on the quality of their representation in each category, to reflect the quality of the program and hosting school. The maximum point total a school could earn is 50 points.
Affordable Tuition is a crucial element in ranking online doctoral programs in Business. Affordability was determined to compare the lowest average cost of tuition, with a maximum score in this category being 20 points, with awarded points decreasing as tuition rises. The cost of tuition and fees used is the most recent numbers as reported by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).
Schools with a larger Student Population were ranked higher than institutions with fewer attending students. While school size may be up to individual preference in person, for online programs larger volume programs often have more streamlined systems and award the most degrees. The school with the most students earned the maximum points in this category with 20 being awarded.
Lastly, the opinion of attending students rounds out the criteria. On account of the relatively fewer number of reviews for the schools which offer online Doctor of Business Administration or similar doctoral programs, this factor has a lesser impact on the overall score. The maximum points awarded is 10 in this category.
The following percentages reflect the influence each statistic has upon the ranking:
- Affordable Tuition – 40%
- Size of the Student Body – 40%
- Quality based on Student Reviews via Niche – 20%
In the event of a tie ranking score, the alphabetical order of the institutions was used to determine the ranking order. All ranking scores are disclosed as Merit. No institution featured in this ranking were given preferential treatment, nor was any requested.
UMUC is a public university and expansion of the University of Maryland, focused on online education. It gives students worldwide access to 120 academic programs in online classes and confers bachelor, masters, and doctoral degrees. The school serves nearly 60,000 students.
CTU is a for-profit, private, mostly online university in Colorado Springs. It was founded in 1965. It offers all levels of degrees through schools of colleges of Business & Management, Engineering & Computer Science, Health Sciences, Information Systems & Technology, Security Studies and Project Management.
Bellevue University is a private, non-profit university based out of Bellevue, Nebraska. It was founded in 1966. Bellevue’s programs often offer accelerated, cohort-based, and/or online delivery to students.
The private, non-profit school was founded by the Arizona Southern Baptist Convention in 1949. Located in Phoenix, Arizona, it is the largest Christian university in the world and serves a student population of over 83,000.
Baker College is a private school in Flint, Michigan, that has developed a thriving online business program. The urban campus was founded in 1911 but has capably adapted to the digital era, stretching beyond the typical MBA offerings.
Wilmington is a private, non-profit school in New Castle, Delaware. It was founded in 1968. Its online programs through its College of Business has robust offerings, including, nine specialized MBAs in addition to its Doctor in Business Administration program. The online doctoral program matches its doctoral candidates with leading corporations to gain significant experience.
This private Texas university was founded in 1908, located in Plainview. Up in the panhandle, Wayland Baptist integrates faith and learning within a liberal arts degree to provide a moral and ethical compass for modern education.
Kentucky’s own University of the Cumberlands was founded in 1889. The private, religious academic institution in Williamsburg, Kentucky rests on the west bank of the Cumberland River.
Students in Ph.D. in business administration programs are more likely to be younger, have less work experience, and a desire to work in academia. DBA students are generally older, hold an MBA, have significant work experience, and want to boost their career and apply new skills to it. They are relentlessly motivated, and often have a management problem that’s driving their study and thesis. This issue could be a problem their current organization is facing that they’re hoping to solve as part of their research and dissertation.
Alas, there aren’t 1-year online doctoral programs in business. Online doctoral programs can be completed alongside your work, so even if they take years, they won’t stop you from accomplishing with what you need to.
Becoming a DBA or Ph.D. in business isn’t just completing coursework. You also need to imagine, research, create, build and defend a thesis or dissertation, and potentially publish your work. Fortunately, programs often make time and space in their curriculum to work on the thesis. However, with each thesis being different and what goes into it varying significantly, various projects will take longer than others.
The amount you earn in business administration is dependent on many factors. One factor is the degree you receive in the field. MBA’s correlate with significantly higher earnings than a Bachelor’s in business administration, and obviously, a doctorate business degree can qualify you for higher wages and more prestigious positions.
How much you make in business administration has a lot to do with your career desires as well. If you take a Ph.D. in business administration, you’re far more apt to end up in academia, either teaching university-level business classes or doing post-doctoral research, or both. These roles pay significantly less than going back into the corporate world, which is more often the domain of graduates of a DBA program who had significant business experience before beginning their doctoral degree in business.
