The Chronicle of Higher Education reports (April 28, 2003):
Katherine S. Mangan, "Business-School Accrediting Group Adopts New
Standards, Providing More Leeway on Faculty Qualifications"
http://chronicle.com/daily/2003/04/2003042803n.htm
Business schools will have more flexibility to determine who is qualified to
teach, but also a new burden of proving what students have learned, under
new accreditation standards approved on Friday.
The revised standards were the featured attraction at the annual meeting of
AACSB International: The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of
Business, which drew 1,200 participants from 40 countries. The standards
were approved overwhelmingly, by a voice vote, despite concerns by some
educators that the association had watered them down in order to accommodate
the growing number of foreign business schools seeking accreditation.
Many of those business schools -- which like others in the association offer
both undergraduate and graduate programs -- use more part-time professors
than would be allowed under current accreditation standards.
Among the major changes:
Instead of prescribing how many full-time, or doctorally-trained,
professors a business school must have, the new standards require schools to
prove that at least three-quarters of the program is taught by faculty
members who actively participate in students' education. A part-time
instructor who advises students outside the class and serves on committees
could qualify as a "participating" faculty member, while an adjunct who
simply shows up to teach a class would not. Under the old standards, at
least 75 percent of instruction had to be offered by full-time professors,
most of whom were expected to have doctorates.
Business schools will be reviewed every 5 years instead of every 10, but
the process will involve less time and paperwork. The new version has 21
standards instead of 41.
Business schools will have to set goals for what they want their students
to learn, and then create ways of measuring whether they've succeed. The new
standards leave it up to each institution to decide what those goals should
be and how they should be measured.
"Your curriculum should be unique to your institution," said Jerry E.
Trapnell, chairman of the association and dean of the Clemson University
College of Business and Behavioral Science. "The AACSB isn't going to be the
ogre or the hammer."
But some business deans weren't comfortable being given so much leeway. "I
get the sense that you're softening your standards," said James A.
Schweikart, dean of a three-year-old business school at Rhode Island
College. He plans to eventually seek accreditation for his program, but
would like to strengthen it first. He worries that when he asks the college
administration for more money to hire professors with doctorates, he'll have
a hard time making his case if the association no longer requires it for
accreditation.
"The tendency, during these times of budget cuts, is to take the cheapest
route possible," he said, adding, "I need a club, not a stick."
Diane Schooley-Pettis, associate business dean at Boise State University,
worried that, by eliminating the requirement that business schools maintain
a set ratio of full-time faculty members to students, the association might
tempt financially strapped institutions to increase class sizes.
The association's director of accreditation, Milton R. Blood, insisted that
even though the new standards give business schools more flexibility in
hiring, the standards are actually tougher than the old ones.
"Instead of just looking at whether faculty members are full-time or
part-time, we want to know how engaged they are in the life of the school,"
said Mr. Blood.
The revised standards will also help schools that are struggling to recruit
enough faculty members with doctorates, he added. While the demand for
business education continues to rise, the number of students pursuing
business doctorates dropped 19 percent from 1994-1995 to 1999-2000.
Not only should business schools be free to rely more on part-timers, but
they should have the freedom to design their own curriculums, association
officials said. Some business professors would like to see an exception in
the case of ethics, to require a stand-alone course on that topic, but the
new standards don't require such a course.
Instead, they list ethics as a topic that should be prominent in business
courses, and they encourage business schools to develop a code of ethical
conduct for professors and students. ....
One of the underlying goals of the new standards is to give business schools
around the world the flexibility to design programs that match their
missions, and not to force them to conform to an outdated American model.
The number of foreign business schools seeking accreditation has grown
substantially since the association began accrediting schools outside of
North America in 1997. Currently, 45 of the 451 business schools accredited
by the association are based outside the United States, and about 80 more
are seeking accreditation.
James T. Wright, dean of business at the University of São Paulo, in Brazil,
said the more flexible standards would allow foreign business schools with
different hiring practices to gain accreditation.
"We hire a lot of practitioners as part-time professors to team teach with
academically-qualified professors," he said. "The new standards recognize
that there are a lot of different ways that you can achieve the same results
without losing rigor or quality."