The PhD program in Management at Mississippi State University is unique in the sense that we blend a solid foundation in the core disciplines of strategic management, organizational behavior, and human resource management with specialized training in the emerging fields of family business management and entrepreneurship. Mississippi State is a world leader in the study of family business and that theme provides a linkage for the research conducted by our faculty and doctoral students. It allows us to compete with much larger universities yet maintain the close interactions between students and faculty that are characteristic of a relatively small program.
Because our program is small, there are substantial opportunities for students to work directly with faculty, and other doctoral students, on research projects. In fact, PhD students graduating from our program will have typically presented several joint-authored research papers at professional meetings and have at least one journal publication prior to writing their dissertations. This provides them with an advantage in the job market. Our students have been able to find positions at good universities that pay very competitive salaries.
at Mississippi State in the PhD program, getting a PhD is more than just going to classes and doing well in those classes. It's really an apprenticeship model. And we very much believe that and implement that here in the management department, PhD in management students, we work with them to make sure that they have access to all aspects of the job. So our jobs are teaching, research and service and we make sure that students have experience with that. That's not something you get at other institutions.
A benefit that is offered to all of the PhD and management students that are accepted with an assistantship is a very competitive stipend. So when I first moved to Starkville, I was aware that the stipend was on par with comparable universities. However, when I got here, I realized that the cost of living was so low and that being here was so much more affordable, that the stipend while comparable actually goes further than it does in a lot of other cities.
Students that complete our management PhD program have a 100% placement rate. We are preparing students for research university positions, and also universities that have a more balanced focus on research and teaching. In our department, our faculty come from a diversity of backgrounds in terms of industry, what we did prior to getting our PhDs. We also have a diversity of research interest in research topics. We have a focus here in family business, but that's tackled from many different angles, many different topics, many different theories.
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