Business Educators Call for New Accreditation Standards
By Katherine S. Mangan
Chronicle of Higher Education, April 10, 2002
Business schools must be accredited in an entirely different way to deal
with the challenges presented by the globalization of business education
and the shortage of faculty members, officials told a gathering of
management educators here this week.
Proposed new accreditation rules, which would give business schools more
flexibility in whom they hire and what they teach, were a hot topic at
the annual meeting of the AACSB International-The Association to Advance
Collegiate Schools of Business. The meeting drew 1,100 educators from 35
countries.
Since the association accredited its first foreign school in 1997 --
ESSEC Business School in Paris -- it has added 29 more overseas schools
to its list of approved institutions. It is trying to do so without
imposing an American model on such a diverse group.
"In trying to apply our accreditation standard globally, we're seeing
new educational approaches we haven't encountered before," said Milton
Blood, director of accreditation for the association, which accredits
413 schools in the United States and abroad.
"We're trying to make the standards much more flexible, while at the
same time ensuring quality."
The proposed revisions, which will be voted on next April, call for
reviews for accredited schools every 5 years instead of every 10.
However, the reviews would take less time and paperwork. If approved,
the new guidelines would be phased in between 2003 and 2005.
The new rules would make it easier for business schools that are
struggling to attract faculty members. The current standards, approved
11 years ago, require that a set percentage of the business school's
full-time faculty members have doctorates, depending on the school's
mission. The new standards would allow schools to demonstrate that
faculty members are competent, regardless of the degrees they have
earned. Business schools increasingly rely on practitioners to teach
their classes, many of whom do not have Ph.D.'s
That would ease pressures on schools that are losing out on the
high-priced bidding wars for Ph.D.-holding faculty candidates. The
number of business doctorates produced in the United States decreased by
19 percent from 1995 to 2000, and only 62 percent of those candidates
planned to teach at a university. (See an article from The Chronicle,
May 4, 2001.)
"Some have told us that if we keep insisting on a specified percentage
of Ph.D.'s in a shrinking market, it will force us to hire people with
questionable Ph.D.'s rather than people with excellent qualifications,"
Mr. Blood said.
Currently, 86 percent of the full-time faculty members at accredited
schools have doctorates. But Mr. Blood insisted that minimizing the
requirements for doctorates would not compromise the quality of the
faculty.
Among the schools that welcome the changes are the University of the
District of Columbia's School of Business and Public Administration. The
regionally accredited school has not applied for AACSB approval before
because of concerns that its library was too small and its faculty
members didn't publish enough. Since then, it has joined a consortium of
area libraries.
"We always felt that the standards were a little too rigid and it
wouldn't be in our interest to apply," said the school's dean, Herbert
G. Quigley. "It seems that the revised standards would be more
accommodating for teaching-oriented schools like ours."
Under the revised rules, the section on curriculum content would be
replaced by one on learning outcomes. "The current system tells us what
your intentions are, but we want to see some demonstration that students
are learning," says Mr. Blood. "We're saying there are many ways of
doing that."