August 17, 2009 - (ATLANTA) - As American executives grow older and live longer many are looking to lengthen their careers well into their golden years but find their MBA degrees only take them so far. As a result of this trend, the new Executive Doctorate in Business offered by Georgia State University's Robinson College of Business received double the number of applications than it had actual slots in the four short months since the program was unveiled. A total of 25 percent of those accepted into the program will travel a great distance to attend classes, including from California, Connecticut, and Arkansas. The average student age is 47.

"Our target class size is 21 and we received such great response to the program, we put some on next year's waiting list," said program director Maury Kalnitz. "We enrolled 21 participants with incredible backgrounds, including from Fortune 500 companies."

Robinson's Executive Doctorate in Business is one of few programs of its type in the nation. The three-year program is practitioner-focused and designed to equip executives with advanced skills they can bring back to their respective workplaces. By comparison, other doctoral programs focus on careers in academia.

"I've been interested in pursuing a doctorate for years but a program didn't exist that was less than four or five years," says Jim O'Connor, a 45-year-old from Greenville, S.C. who begins the program later this month.

O'Connor, who owns a consulting company, added, "The focus of the program is very exciting to me. I plan to develop my research skills, apply those skills, build credentials and a professional network, and change the focus of my business to an environmentally sustainable one."

"It used to be that after you reached a certain age, there were no more educational opportunities," said Kalnitz. "They may be at the top of their career ladder, but executives need to go further, to learn how to apply research methods to practical problems in ways that benefit their companies, as they remain in the workforce longer."

Lars Mathiassen, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, co-founder of Robinson's Center for Process Innovation and a professor in the college's Department of Computer Information Systems is academic director of the Executive Doctorate program.

The largest business school in the South and part of a major research institution, the J. Mack Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University is located in Atlanta, an epicenter of business and a gateway to the world. With programs on four continents and students from 150 countries, the college is both worldwide and world class. Its part-time MBA program is ranked number seven in the nation and has been in the top 10 for 14 consecutive years. The college has 200 faculty, 7,400 students and 65,000 alumni. Noted for an emphasis on educating leaders, the Robinson College of Business and Georgia State University have produced more of Georgia's top executives with graduate degrees than any other school in the nation.