‘AACSB accreditation opens doors to international partnerships’: Executive Vice-President

NEW DELHI : The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, also known as AACSB International, is a global accreditation body for business schools that has, so far, accredited 21 Indian B-schools. Stephanie Bryant, executive vice-president, and global chief accreditation officer, AACSB, spoke to Careers360 about the process of accreditation, why it matters, and the challenges in India. Edited excerpts below.

Q. What are the parameters for accreditation and the process?

A. The process of becoming an AACSB-accredited school takes a while. The schools want to demonstrate that they are committed to high-quality business education and continuous improvement. They do that by aligning with our standards. Then they have a peer review team visit every five years. The team has deans from accredited business schools.

The schools that want to be accredited must have at least 16 full-time faculty and funding that will help them ensure that they will be successful.Business schools apply to come into the process. That application goes before a committee of deans from 40 accredited schools. Everything we do is peer-reviewed.

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The accreditation committee checks if they look like they can come up to AACSB standards, whether they are meeting the standards today and whether they can meet the standards in future.

There are certain requirements – for example, a certain percentage of qualified people; the commitment to assurance of learning and commitment to societal impact; producing intellectual contributions in research. They don’t have to be doing that when they apply but over a period of time, generally about five years, they slowly come into compliance with the standards.

The committee constantly guides them and gives them feedback. When the committee thinks they are aligned, they will invite them to a visit and that is the initial visit. The committee will then look at whether the school is aligned with our standards. If they are, they will recommend to the board that we accredit the school. Only the board of directors can grant accreditation.

Q. What happens after a B-school gets accredited?

A. Once they become initially accredited, the school will usually be at our annual and other meetings to stay current. They will have a peer-review visit every five years. The peer review team judges whether the school is still aligned to the standards and is demonstrating continuous improvement and high quality outcomes. The school is looked at formally every five years.

Q. Why do B-schools seek AACSB accreditation?

A. There are three main reasons. Number one is internationalisation. If you have the AACSB recognition, it will open many doors for international partnerships. Many schools will not partner with a school without AACSB accreditation, especially, if that school is itself accredited. They want to partner with others with AACSB accreditation because they are of similar quality.

Rankings is another thing. You cannot be ranked by some of the external rankings agencies if you do not have a business accreditation.

The third reason is that you’ll attract more faculty, students or employers to your school. You’re going to be in a different category, one comprising the best business schools in the world.

Q. How do you ensure a standard across countries?

A. Our standards are principles-based. Whether you’re talking about faculty qualifications or strategic planning or societal impact, we can accredit schools with very different profiles. So, the question is, how can you accredit a world-famous school and then also have the same accreditation for a school that isn’t as famous?

The answer is that our standards are not prescriptive. There’s only a slight amount of prescriptiveness in the faculty qualifications. Other than that, our standards are mission-driven.

We ask the schools what their mission is. Who do they want to serve? What types of contributions, like scholarship or research, do they want to produce? The schools tell us that. A globally-recognised school might have a research-based mission. Another may be teaching or societal-impact-oriented.

Our standard is, for example, to say you must have a strategic plan, you must have qualified faculty, you must be making a level of contribution. However, we do not tell schools what that looks like for them. They define it within their own contexts and parameters. Then our teams assess if the school is living up to the mission. We are not comparing them to each other; they’re compared to themselves.

Q. If a student or a recruiter sees the AACSB certification, what can they be assured of?

A. Specifically, there are two things: one is that they are going to receive education from qualified faculty. We assess quality based on academic preparation – they have a doctoral degree or a Master’s like an MBA where they are qualified through professional engagement. The faculty must be qualified through one of those routes.

The second is coursework. We do not tell any business school what their curriculum should be. We expect them to have traditional business content but we don’t say, for instance, you must have two classes in accounting or four in marketing.

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What we do say is that the schools have to have current, relevant topics in the curriculum and must be proficient in current and emerging technology. Technology is a big part of our accreditation standards.

We also have assurance of learning. For every degree programme, the school has to declare what the competencies are. These are what a student should be able to know or do after getting this curriculum instruction. Our team comes in and looks at whether this is happening.

Q. What trends are you seeing during AACSB accreditation in India?

A. When you come into the AACSB world you first come in as a member and then go for accreditation. We have 102 B-schools in India that are in membership and 21 that are already accredited ; 33 more are in the process of getting accredited.

I would say there’s a lot of energy in India. AACSB accreditation is very valued and sought-after and there is a great deal of interest from India. As more schools come in and we accredit some of the top schools, others want that accreditation as well. I think reputation drives a lot of this.

Q. What has been the experience of accreditation in India? Are there challenges?

A. The challenges in India, just from my vantage point, are two. One is strategy. There can be a gap between the vision of what strategy is and what schools believe is strategy.

From an AACSB standpoint, we are very sure about what we expect strategies to be. Schools must have a written plan. These are mission, vision, values, goals, how these are measured and what tools are used to know if you’re achieving your goals. I think there’s room for improvement in India, for that to be a more mature vision. I don’t see real challenges in faculty qualifications.

Research, I think, can be improved. There is a lot of activity but producing peer-reviewed articles in highly-respected journals – on that there’s varying levels of maturity across schools. That needs to be worked on.

I can tell you an area that they don’t need improvement in. Every school I visited has focused on societal impact. The interest in making a positive impact on society is probably the biggest shift. B-school education has been very inward-looking, very shareholder primacy, very much about making money – at least in the view of the world. We have really moved to a multi-stakeholder viewpoint.