In October AACSB launched a proactive campaign on behalf of management education designed to help broaden the perception of business schools locally and management education as a whole globally.

The new Advocacy Initiative aims to impact perceptions of management education by delivering two key messages to senior executives for employers who hire (or should hire) large numbers of business school graduates and for public policymakers. The messages are: (1) business schools contribute to local/regional economic development and to national economic competitiveness; and (2) business school scholarship influences leading-edge management practice.

The program comes at a time when a record number of MBA students-nearly 100,000 annually-graduate from business schools. Business undergraduate enrollment, after slumping during the first half of the decade, now is increasing. Job placement of business school graduates has never been better. "Training Magazine" estimates that employers with more than 100 employees are spending a record $60 billion annually on education and training of their work forces ... a substantial piece of which is at university-based business schools. Financial gifts to business schools are on a scale unimagined just a few years ago.

It is within this "best of times" environment, which historically fluctuates according to the economy, that the Advocacy Initiative aims to position business schools as something more than MBA factories. The program aims to increase the recognition that business schools not only are building critical new knowledge for managers, but also are involved in community service and are contributing to important public policy debates.

"Yet as I interact with AACSB member deans," said Roy Herberger, Jr., AACSB president, "there is a palpable sense of uncertainty and discomfort. Many of the old assumptions we make about ourselves, and that others make about us, are changing." Geographic barriers that created local "franchises" for many schools have been destroyed by new technology, he said. For-profit companies, less encumbered by tradition, academic governance processes and broad-based missions, are moving rapidly to develop anytime/anyplace delivery models for what they perceive as high profit courses and degree programs - with business and management topics being the centerpiece of their efforts. The number of in-house corporate universities has grown from 400 to 1,600 in less than a decade, said Herberger, "thus creating the prospect that some of our best customers may evolve into important competitors. Some university-based business schools correctly perceive themselves as linked to the most mature part of the management education market - traditional "college age" students enrolled in on campus degree programs - while new competitors capture the growth segments of our industry."

Herberger said that the economic uncertainty of recent months also creates doubt over demand by future students for business majors, and for the placement of business graduates. "Just as surely as we collectively share in both deserved and undeserved credit for national economic success, we are likely to share blame for the inevitable recession or even deflation that some forecast," he said.

"Business schools share in the changing environment that faces higher education as a whole," continued Herberger. "We are all members of an industry that has benefited from a very generous social contract, providing substantial public funding for our endeavors, with relatively few strings attached, for more than a century," he said. "Yet today much of the reporting that occurs about higher education focuses on rapidly rising tuition and student fees; perceptions of indifferent teaching and irrelevant research; political intolerance on campus; sexual harassment scandals; and intercollegiate athletic scandals. It is not at all clear that we hold the high ground with policymakers allocating scarce public resources to health care, social services, corrections, transportation and other critical needs. In this environment, universities must be seen as responsive to the real needs of our communities, and business schools must be seen as something more than a feeder system for large companies."

University-based business schools hold at least one sustainable advantage over such education providers as Disney University, Jones Cable and the Apollo Group, according to Herberger. "We are the only source producing new management knowledge," he said. "Application of this intellectual capital to issues of local and regional economic growth raises the positive visibility of business schools to external stakeholders and provides a tangible return on investment to key funding sources; creates needed opportunities for applied research and teaching for our faculty and students; and positions business and business schools as agents of positive social change."

Disciplines such as public administration, social work, sociology and political science have too long "owned" issues of economic development, said Herberger, especially in disadvantaged locations such as inner cities, rural areas dependent on a mature or declining industry, and communities populated by a racial or ethnic minority. "For too long, prospective students who select a major (at least in part) by the potential it offers to improve their society and their world, have not viewed business schools as a logical alternative," he said. "Yet there is a social imperative to business - the wealth it creates permits the solution of other social problems," he pointed out. "It empowers individuals to exercise personal and political freedom in a manner not possible in societies where all efforts are trained on economic subsistence and, far beyond laws and transfer  payments, business promotes social mobility." Business schools with well-planned and executed local economic development initiatives position themselves and the industry in a manner that provides distinctive and durable service to stakeholders, regardless of particular economic conditions or the new course offerings of unconventional competitors, he said.

A focal point of the Advocacy Initiative is a News Bureau that routinely delivers stories to the media about the contributions business schools make to local/regional economic development and to national economic competitiveness, and shares trends and success stories with AACSB member schools. During the fall, AACSB collected success stories that centered on the impact of business schools on economically disadvantaged communities. The vignettes were incorporated into a national story that was shared with all AACSB member institutions and with selected national media outlets. A "fill-in-the-blank" template also was provided to member schools for customizing and sharing with their local media. Currently, the Initiative is collecting vignettes on how schools are preparing students specifically for a career in nonprofit management and how schools are addressing the needs of family businesses.

School-designated Advocacy Initiative point persons at member schools are key components of the vignette collection process and extended local media outreach. Many AACSB member schools already have identified point persons at their schools. 

Success stories on various aspects of business school involvement with economic development also will be disseminated in speeches to key business and public policy organizations and will be highlighted at a two-day AACSB seminar on economic development issues in June.

Development and implementation of the Advocacy Initiative is seen as an indicator of AACSB's new and expanded role of speaking on behalf of management education to key external stakeholders.