Executive PhD

Use Your Experience to Create Next-Level Impact

Elevate your impact by combining your extensive professional experience with WPI’s Executive Ph.D. program. In our flexible, course-based program, you’ll work closely with a cohort of fellow students whose interests and initiative match your own.

Additionally, you choose from one of three concentrations in the Executive Ph.D. program: Entrepreneurship, Information Technology, and Operations Management. Faculty will support and guide you as you produce publishable research that employs varied qualitative and quantitative research methods with your work in the applied research context. You’ll master well-defined, research-based approaches that are grounded in academic methods to increase your influence in your industry or professional path.

Research methods for a business Ph.D. require a different but equally rigorous set of skills than other doctoral programs. As an Executive Ph.D. candidate, you will learn and apply rigorous research methods, gain experience in analyzing data and understanding human factors, and apply qualitative and quantitative skills for the most effective outcomes.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute was founded in 1865 to create and convey the latest science and engineering knowledge in ways that are most beneficial to society.

Today, WPI holds firm to its founding mission to provide an education that balances theory with practice, a philosophy symbolized by the towers of our two original buildings, pictured above.

WPI's 14 academic departments offer more than 50 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science, engineering, technology, business, the social sciences, and the humanities and arts, leading to bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees.

The university’s curriculum features a flexible, rigorous program that is project-based and globally engaged, aimed at the quality experience and a positive impact for the communities it partners with. WPI faculty members--recently ranked top in the nation for quality and accessibility, as reported by the Wall Street Journal--work with students on interdisciplinary research seeking solutions to important and socially relevant problems, both on campus and at more than 40 project centres throughout the Americas, Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Europe.