Doctor of Business Administration

What is a DBA?

The Doctor of Business Administration degree is the original degree intended to qualify faculty members to perform research and teach at business schools. Over the past five years however, a new type of executive doctoral program has started to appear at AACSB-accredited institutions. The new DBA programs, such as the one USF offers, are designed for working professionals and tend to be pursued for different reasons.

The Doctor of Business Administration program offered by the USF Muma College of Business provides graduates with the skills needed to conduct rigorous research with the objective of applying the findings to real-world decision-making in industry and government. The program provides intellectual growth as students work closely with faculty in seminars, research projects, and other assignments that develop their research skills and ability to communicate their findings to a broad audience of both practitioners and researchers. It also offers students the opportunity to develop a portfolio of skills that, when combined with the extensive experience that students bring into the program, uniquely qualifies them to serve in clinical faculty positions.

USF's DBA is the only DBA program in the nation where new cohorts begin each January.   Most programs begin in August.  For leaders who are in industries where the fourth quarter can make or break the year, this January program start is often much more convenient.

The curriculum is designed to build upon the breadth of business understanding that students have previously achieved as successful executives. This is achieved by offering substantive coverage of a broad variety of qualitative and quantitative research techniques and by allowing students the flexibility to focus more deeply on personal areas of interest during their dissertation. The degree conferred is a Doctor of Business Administration, a terminal degree so-named to differentiate it from the PhD degree that specifically focuses on preparing students for an academic research career within a specific discipline.