NEWSLINE - Summer 1999

Pilot Study Tests Applicability of Accreditation Standards Worldwide

One of the goals of the pilot study was to test the applicability of AACSB accreditation standards and procedures worldwide.

In its final report, the International Peer Review Task Force said, "even considering some of the challenges that application of AACSB standards has brought about, the standards can be applied with consistency to schools beyond the borders of the U.S. and Canada. The standards, both in philosophy and operationalization, are more globally generalizable than was even originally envisioned. Yet some refinement is essential."

The refinements recommended by the task force include such things as word changes in some of the standards to reflect their application beyond the U.S. and Canada. One example is Precondition 1.a., which states that a school seeking accreditation by AACSB should be authorized to grant degrees in the United States, Canada or specified regions. The task force recommended saying, a school seeking accreditation by AACSB "should be authorized by an appropriate regional or national body to grant degrees." Altogether, there were word changes recommended for 14 items in the standards.

"One thing we learned in the pilot that seems obvious, but that is important to look at," said Gary G. Williams, business dean at the University of San Francisco who chairs the new AACSB Accreditation Application Review Committee (AARC), "is that there are significant things in the standards that are oriented to the U.S./Canadian style of business school. Terminology that we’ve grown used to may make no sense elsewhere. Somebody has to revise terminology to make it more applicable across a broader set of diverse schools."

The task force recommended that AACSB’s current standards, in use for six years, be reviewed to incorporate the wealth of information gathered from accreditation and reaccreditation activities since they were developed. In the meantime, the task force proposed that the standards be supplemented by an appendix of international implementation guidelines, developed in June 1998.

"As a result of internationalization, our standards will be enriched and enhanced by encompassing different approaches to quality management education," said Cascade Huan, AACSB director of global accreditation. "Ours is not the only approach."

Different cultures, degree programs and institutional structures in various world regions sometimes require different interpretations of the standards. The peer review teams that visited the pilot institutions, however, found that the variations did not require modifying the philosophy underlying the standards or sacrificing the quality required by the standards.

"The essential thing is to be able to adapt standards to different cultures without watering them down so they have little relation to quality," said Gary Sundem, chair of the accounting department at the University of Washington and vice chair of the visit team and accounting advisor for Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Greg Whittred, associate dean at the University of New South Wales’ Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM), on his first peer review visit, said he was most impressed with the Warwick team’s rigorousness regarding processes, systems and quality. "They didn’t mind that the product was different," he said, "but the quality assurance had to be there. I walked away feeling very comfortable about the willingness of these accreditation teams, the open mindedness of these teams to different kinds of programs that are designed to fit different kinds of markets, but, equally, a single-minded focus on the quality issue."

When questions of interpretation arise in the review of any school, regardless of its location, the task force report said, the peer review team is expected to make judgments on the reasonableness of any deviations from the standards. "Such judgments become even more critical as the accreditation process extends beyond the U.S. and Canada," the report stated.

The need for judgment calls by peer review teams may, in fact, become more complex in the next phase of peer review, believes Randy Westerfield, University of Southern California business dean who served as chair of the peer review team for Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

"The first institutions were like low hanging fruit," he said. "Now, as we reach a little higher, we will get into some of the diversity issues and have to grapple with them a little bit. In emerging markets there will be more uncertainty. The Business Accreditation Committee (BAC) is going to have to work through these issues," he said. "I think it is a good thing we are branching out. But we should be cautious, just as we should be cautious with North American universities and be mindful of quality standards."

The BAC, AACSB staff, task force members and various peer review teams had opportunities to discover where greater care, if not caution, is necessary in communicating about schools that are not in the domestic environment.

When a North American school is undergoing accreditation or reaccreditation, said Paul Dascher, Stetson University business dean who is outgoing BAC chair, certain things can be assumed about the institution, the educational environment in which it exists, the secondary education environment, the market for faculty and other things that don’t have to be factored into the information flow.

"As we began getting team reports from international institutions," Dascher said, "we developed questions, not about the quality, but questions that came from not understanding aspects of the educational environment and culture. That’s how we found the first need to educate ourselves."

The BAC told peer review teams that they had to make sure they were providing the necessary environmental and cultural background in a way that it could be understood by committee members who were not familiar with the pilot institution’s situation.

Task force chair John Seybolt acknowledged that a breakdown in communication, both with the general membership as well as with BAC, provided an important lesson. Seybolt is senior vice president for academic affairs at Thunderbird, American Graduate School of International Management.

"The biggest log in the road was that those of us who were so tuned in to this project could see the benefits, but we didn’t engage more of the general membership early enough," he said. "And, we didn’t tune into the BAC as early as we should have. They wondered what was going on. We were proposing something that looked fairly radical to the membership and other committees. We didn’t bring them on board immediately in all of the planning."

Huan said the staff has learned a lesson in communication. "Within the last year, we have taken precautionary measures to make sure the BAC is communicated with adequately, to make sure the teams understand what the mission is and how to document evidence of quality when there are deviations from standards," she said.

One standard that presented a challenge was the 50 percent rule regarding general education. The emphasis that U.S. business schools place on general education is not shared in all world regions. Different structures for business education and secondary education in Mexico, the U.K. and Hong Kong result in students spending more time focused on management courses, rather than liberal arts courses.

"The way it is written in our standards, almost no one in the British system would qualify," Williams said. "At Warwick, there is no general education curriculum as we know it. That all takes place prior to them entering the university. Yet the students who are graduating from that university have every bit of the breadth that our students have, at a very high quality."

"This is going to be a challenge for us to address," said Larry Penley, Arizona State business dean who served on ITAM’s peer view team, "and one that people may have strong feelings about." At ITAM, Penley said, the general education situation is blurred by the fact that students in the business school can-not count English credits toward their degree, as American business students might count 6 to 12 credits for Spanish courses. The reason is that the ITAM students have to test out of English as well as Spanish, demonstrating proficiency in both reading and speaking.

"You could argue that there is a focus on general education even without the specific credits," said Penley. "You come down to ITAM’s appearing not to meet that standard, but instead the spirit of the standard is being met."

Another place where the spirit of the standard, but not the letter, was met in Mexico is with the full-time faculty requirement. At the undergraduate level, the use of part-time faculty is extensive. But part-time faculty at ITESM have to have at least two master’s degrees, 15 years of experience and go through an extensive teaching training program. "We have to look at that issue a great deal differently than we would have otherwise," Williams said.

AACSB meetings and training sessions need to provide opportunities to learn from the people who are making visits to international sites, or who are engaged in other ways in international management education issues. "We have, as an association, not yet developed the linkage to take those lessons learned and share them with the rest of us," said Dascher.

"That’s what we recognize as the next phase of our challenge," he said. "We have the continuous improvement seminars and the Annual Meeting. We need better ways to showcase and focus in terms of the learning and in terms of what we are discovering about quality from these institutions. It is incumbent upon us to do that. The challenge is to make sure all members benefit from this type of activity."

The board has allocated time in the next few months, Penley said, to discuss the outcomes associated with international accreditation and how to meet the needs of members in terms of providing information.

The fact that AACSB is a volunteer organization means that there are limits to what can be accomplished, no matter how good the ideas. The BAC last year dealt with more than 100 institutions for initial accreditation, reaffirmation of accreditation, continuing review and interim reports, Dascher said. "To come and say, ‘we are going to take volunteers and expect more and more,’ we can’t," he said. "We have to work with the system and take some time to discover what is needed and incorporate that into the system."

Huan said that during the pilot phase, AACSB staff time was concentrated on making sure the pilot schools benefited from the experience. "We wanted to get it off the ground and on the right track," she said. "Now is the time to operationalize the benefits we articulated at the beginning. We are going to put more effort into sharing best practices. As the number of accredited institutions grows, there will be more showcasing of best practices at the Annual Meeting and at workshops, similar to the two showcased at the April meeting in Atlanta.

"We are sitting on a mountain of information," said Huan. "We have not traditionally invested in the staffing and technology to compile this information and share it with the larger member pool. We are going to define quality so that every school, wherever it is, whomever it is serving, can find the kind of data it can benchmark for its own benefit."

Another responsibility will be to have a formal process of training deans to serve on teams. It will be the same kind of training, on a modified scale, as was done when the new standards went into effect.

Williams sees the need for more training of teams and advisors as one of the biggest issues, but not as a barrier. The groups can be seeded with those who have experience. Enthusiasm will build as more people go through the process. "You can get really excited when you break out of the culture and see different approaches to management education," he said.

A task force report on lessons learned will be distributed to members in the fall.