One of the principles taught in business schools throughout the country is that the availability of good, reliable data and information is a key to any successful business enterprise. AACSB thinks so, too.

That's why the organization is primed to launch an ambitious effort to more systematically collect data and produce information to help member schools plan for the future, evaluate their programs, make comparisons, and better inform students and other stakeholders.

"From all the listening I've done during the past three or four years, one thing that is clear from members is that they want more data about their industry so they can better understand and manage their schools," said AACSB President Robert L. Taylor, business dean at the University of Louisville. "Business schools teach that the availability of information makes for a more informed consumer and therefore AACSB needs to be as open as it can in providing useful information to its members."

Others point out that organizations need good data just to manage effectively.

"We need data about industry-wide trends, as well as performance characteristics of individual schools, and it is difficult for people to access descriptive information on new or effective practices of management education," said Milton Blood, AACSB managing director.

According to Dan LeClair, newly appointed director of information services and strategies at AACSB, "There is widespread agreement that the data and information currently available about management education and its providers are inadequate for a variety of reasons, including flawed methodology, inaccurate and inconsistent reporting, and failure to address important elements of management education."

Discussions are under way concerning what kinds of information should be collected and how it should be used, with a decision soon on the setting up of a pilot program. If the pilot program is successful, the full effort could be implemented by fall 2000.

LeClair said that the results of a recent AACSB member survey demonstrated the need for a more systematic and rigorous effort to collect data. Across all member segments (accredited, non-accredited, top 50, and non-U.S.), respondents indicated that AACSB should place the strongest emphasis on providing data and information on management education industry trends, business school policies and best practices, and performance in business school operations. Members also want AACSB to promote the value of accreditation and management education to external stakeholders.

In order to respond to member needs, said LeClair, the organization must:

• Establish well-defined and transparent processes for collecting data
• Expand the areas in which it collects data
• Improve the validity, reliability and comparability of the data collected
• Create systems for converting the data into valuable information
• Make information more accessible to members
• Leverage the aggregate information effectively to promote management education and accreditation to external stakeholders

LeClair's responsibility is to refine the project definitions and develop appropriate methodologies for acquiring and analyzing the data. Drafts of the survey instrument, related procedures and proposals for dissemination will be circulated to AACSB members for comment during the development process.

Actually gathering reliable data and making it more accessible may prove easy compared to developing and implementing any related policies that may be developed. Inherent are questions such as: What are the criteria for collecting information? How is it going to be analyzed? How is it going to be disseminated? Who will have access to it? How will they use it? "

AACSB first needs to demonstrate to members that it can collect methodologically appropriate data and can present it in meaningful ways to users," said Blood.

The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), which represents a far smaller number of schools and is focused on promoting access to graduate and professional management education, already has begun creating standards for reporting admissions data and expects to launch a collection effort in a few months. AACSB's participation in GMAC's Task Force for Industry Information represents an effort to work cooperatively to minimize the reporting burden for business schools.

Andrew Policano, business dean at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, noted that one problem AACSB faces is that its member population is much more diverse than that of GMAC. "It's a good effort, and this is exactly what AACSB should be doing," Policano said. "But the diversity of the membership implies it's going to be a challenging exercise."

LeClair agrees. "We need to balance an appreciation for diversity with the desire to collect comparable data," he said. Paralleling member experience with accreditation, five general categories for acquiring data have been proposed: curriculum, instruction, students, faculty and intellectual contributions.

Very much in line with the member survey results, LeClair said the primary and initial use for the data is to provide members with:

• Useful reports on management education industry trends. Analyses would be published as part of a quarterly report series for members and other management education stakeholders. Each year would feature quarterly reports on students, faculty and program trends, with one report each year reserved for special topics.
  
• Comparative data to promote continuous improvement. For example, AACSB already produces an annual salary survey report along with customized salary inquiry service reports. The new processes should provide a much richer data set and make the reports even more valuable.
  
• Special research reports. Periodically, members ask for special reports on particular issues. A more complete, higher quality database would enhance the staff's ability to respond to requests in a much more timely fashion.
  
• Descriptive information and services on effective practices. Comparative data can help schools identify areas for possible improvement. However, the data do not help schools understand how to improve. By mining the database, AACSB will identify benchmarking areas. AACSB also will create processes to identify and study effective practices, communicate these to schools and help schools adapt the practices to their own institution.

The initiative raises other questions, as well: Will member schools cooperate in providing information? What happens if a member school refuses to supply the data? Will the data have some role in eventual accreditation issues for a school? What data will be made public? And, a question that may be in the back of the mind of every dean of a major business school: Will this data somehow be used to affect the current crop of ratings by popular magazines such as U.S. News and Business Week?

The organization still is grappling with these questions, and no clear-cut answers have emerged."

One policy issue that the AACSB board will address in the near future will be whether providing these data should be a requirement of accreditation, or possibly even for membership," said Blood. "But that has not been determined yet."

Taylor noted that "our intent is that a requisite of AACSB membership is the providing of this data by each member school on an annual basis.

"We don't know what this will mean until we conduct a pilot study," Taylor continued. "After the study, we will have a much better sense of the cost to each individual school associated with collecting and submitting the data."

Then, of course, there are the ratings. Would creation of a more accurate, reliable and comprehensive database improve the controversial ratings popularized by Business Week and other magazines?

AACSB officials say the data collection project won't be used to develop another rating system. In fact, they say, it may help improve the efforts by the magazines because they may have access to consistent, reliable information, rather than what many business school administrators consider to be arbitrary data sets.

Taylor said he thought the media would continue to do its "reputational" surveys, but might come to AACSB for comparative and analytical data because of the quality of the information that will be contained in the database.

"The overall result is that AACSB must take the lead in identifying what quality is in management education, and it must have the data and performance indicators to do it," said Taylor.