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"AACSB could work early with any
school that comes forward to set up a planning process that involves
continuous improvement, appropriate changes in the curriculum and the
hiring of high quality faculty," Policano said. "We could set up
a template the school can follow to achieve accreditation. The whole
process could be viewed as one that adds a lot of value to the development
of the school. It would allow planning to flow more naturally into the
accreditation process than it has done to this point," he said.
"Ten years is far too long for a process to have much value."
Kraft agrees that reaffirmation should be
made more continuous. "If the process were more frequent, it would be
less arduous," he said. "Now, people forget about the standards
for nine years. Then, the year before reaccreditation, they spend a whole
year and waste a lot of time and effort producing volumes of material for
a one-shot thing. We would like to reduce the paperwork, increase the
frequency and make the entire process a more positive experience that fits
with mission-driven continuous improvement. I think the biggest need is
that we change the mechanism so that people view the accreditation process
as having a lot of value in it," Kraft said.
Greater Differences, Fuzzier Boundaries
Committee member Dan Dalton,
business dean at Indiana University, says the committee will make a
profound contribution to AACSB’s core competency by responding to both
the external and internal developments of the past decade.
"There are corporate universities,
plus a variety of online, private sector organizations that are beginning
to provide subject matter that historically has been done through bricks
and mortar," Dalton said. "In addition, there is a continuing
tendency for member schools to have special operations and opportunities
by region, by discipline, by mission. AACSB has to be aware of the
increasing differentiation of its members. Of the hundreds of schools that
provide a business curriculum, there are growing differences among
them."
That differentiation now presents a greater
challenge for AACSB to define requirements that member schools think are
necessary to assure prospective students that these are quality
institutions, Dalton said. "We need to find ways to recognize the
differences, deal with them appropriately, but also recognize the
commonalities across them, because that is the strength of the
organization.
"One size is not going to fit all,
even four sizes are not going to fit all. What do we do with a school that
has a stellar reputation in one discipline," Dalton said, "but
is not quite where we would want it to be across the board?"
Dalton posed the possibility of accrediting
individual programs or disciplines or delivery systems in a school,
without accrediting an entire school. "That would be a departure from
what AACSB has done," he said. "I’m not suggesting those would
be the outcomes but those are the kinds of questions we, as a committee,
almost certainly will have to consider. It is an unusual business school
that can claim to be really first rate across the entire curriculum."
Committee members generally agree that
there may need to be some way to redefine the unit that receives
accreditation. Currently, accreditation is tied to the institution, but
with institutions becoming more collaborative, their boundaries are less
distinct. One institution may offer an international MBA with one group of
schools and an e-commerce program with another set. "This is an issue
the committee is going to have to work very hard on and get a lot of
guidance from members on because it is going to be a difficult
issue," Blood said.
Technology Changes Everything
(Just About)
"Technology" is one of
the first words used to explain the reason for massive change in
management education. It might refer to the ability to deliver education
over long distances, the resources to gather and store vast amounts of
data, computing power and its impact on how business operates or the speed
and diversity of electronic communications. In whatever sense
"technology" is used, it affects business education. And, it
affects both the standards and the process of business school
accreditation.
"In 1992, distance learning basically
meant just a satellite campus," said committee member John Williams,
business dean at Morehouse College. "We are not just dealing with
satellite campuses any more. In some cases we are dealing with entire
degree programs that are being completed through distance learning. We
have to make sure we have methods in place to ensure and validate the
quality of these programs."
Experience with previously accredited
schools that added satellite campuses provides some insights into how to
review a distance curriculum for consistent instructional quality,
Williams said. "But it may be very difficult to provide an education
that corresponds to a particular mission if all the learning is at a
distance," he added.
The committee must deal with how technology
can alter the accreditation process itself. "We can do more things
virtually than ever before," said Jean Wyer, committee member and
principal of PricewaterhouseCoopers. "A smart and technologically
alert campus could now do a campus tour during which I could sit in my
office and see the school. Visit teams never have been able to do this
before, and they wouldn’t have to do it necessarily, but the technology
is there to do some new things."
Wyer, a member of AACSB’s Accounting
Accreditation Committee, referred to a recent experiment for the AAC that
involved her, an East Coast business school and another AAC member.
"It was an eye-opening experience," she said. "I was in New
York, the other committee member was in Texas and we had a lot of data to
get back and forth quickly. I literally sat in my office or in my kitchen
with my laptop and clicked through what I needed to see, instead of
digging in a crateful of documents. We used a lot of data that the school
already had and they didn’t have to redo it for us. I then sat with my
computer and headset, talked to the committee member in Texas, and went
over what we needed to accomplish in the upcoming visit. It was a much
better experience for me as a corporate visit team member," she said.
"So much easier."
Wyer said that this electronic method might
well be used as part of a new process of accreditation, but she emphasized
that it has to be done with the full knowledge and agreement of everyone.
"It has to be a level playing field," Wyer said, "where
everyone knows what data are being looked at. We don’t want to scare
people into thinking that if they don’t do a paper self-study we might
see something they don’t want us to see, or rely on something they
don’t know we are relying on."
Dan LeClair, AACSB’s director of
knowledge services, currently is heading AACSB’s new Performance
Indicators Project. The project is designed to build a comprehensive
database about business schools that will provide members with customized
information to support planning and continuous improvement efforts.
LeClair said he sees a "huge opportunity" to give the process of
accreditation more continuity and add more value through a reliable supply
of data and information.
"Schools provide a great deal of
information; and, in many respects, it takes them two or three years just
to provide a good report," LeClair said. "If AACSB can provide
schools with a faster way to get a better handle on the data that will
help them improve, that will facilitate the opportunity to make
accreditation a more continuous process."
Achieving The Right Fit In Global Education
Another major change driving the
board’s call for an accreditation review is the ongoing
internationalization of accreditation. There now are 14 AACSB-accredited
schools outside the United States and Canada.
Members were asked for support to run the
international accreditation pilot studies several years ago. "We
wanted to really stay with quality issues and we acknowledged up front
that there might be some deviations from the strict letter of the
standards," Blood said. "We found there are some. Although the
standards are very flexible and can be used internationally, we have
learned that there are a few things — mostly in written interpretations
of the standards — that have the American model in mind. And we are
going to need to change those," he said. "It is not really
difficult to make the standards work in a global situation, but we know we
can make them better and be more cognizant of the different structures in
different parts of the world to make the standards more universal."
Jean-Marie Toulouse, director of Ecole des
Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Montreal, and the only non-U.S. committee
member, said, "The actual approach to accreditation is highly
American. If we are moving to an international type of accreditation, do
we need to change the framework and, if so, how do you do that?"
Some of the factors that will need to be
taken into account are how the institution functions, the types of
programs offered and the milieu in which it operates.
As an example, Toulouse pointed to the
differences between the French provinces and the English provinces of
Canada. In Quebec, a two-year college degree is compulsory to enter a
university, similar to the French system, whereas in the English part of
Canada, a high school graduate can go directly to a university. The
French-Canadian university student is there only three years, instead of
four.
Some institutions around the world have
very small MBA programs and huge executive education programs, Toulouse
said. In some countries, schools have almost no full-time students as
defined in North America, but rather part-time students and continuing
education students. Faculty members may be hired on a retainer to teach a
certain number of hours, and also have some other occupation.
"If you are trying to manage an
organization where you don’t have what we call a ‘faculty member,’
what does that mean, and does that have an impact on the quality of what
is being done and on the diploma being awarded?," Toulouse asked.
"I think accreditation can be truly international, but it is a
difficult process," he said.
Should AACSB move toward standards that
could be applied anywhere in the world?
"The pressures are big," Toulouse
said, "be-cause our students are accepting jobs, sometimes in the
U.S., sometimes in Japan, sometimes in Europe. They have to be confident
that their degrees are comparable, the same quality. And, if you are the
employer, you want to be sure that you have a symbol, or a stamp, that
each degree means the same thing, that standards are at the same
level."
Besides the assurance of equivalent value,
international accreditation also means allowing for the inclusion of
diverse perspectives, Wyer said.
"Visit teams are seeing business
schools doing new things in places where we have not traditionally
operated," Wyer said. "The impact of doing things in different
organizational structures and different places, with different partners,
means we really will need to rethink what we are doing right now."
Policano realizes the international
question is a big one. "The committee wants to work hard with schools
to make sure there is inclusivity and heterogeneity in the standards and
provide opportunities for global interaction," he said. "I think
it is possible, but not easy.
"We want to try to boil the basis of
the accreditation review down to the essential ingredient, which is the
quality of the learning experience," Policano said. "That should
be similar regardless of who the student is and who the teacher is."
Part of the challenge, as well, Wyer
believes, is balancing the undeniable success of U.S. business education
against the need to include worldwide perspectives and content.
"The efforts AACSB has made in the
U.S. for quality collegiate business education have been profoundly
successful and have had a huge impact on our ability as an economy,"
said Wyer.
"If you travel around the world you
can see the positive effect that quality business education can have —
not all of it is in the U.S. And, as the economy becomes more global,
educators really need to work together to internationalize quality
business education."
The Work Ahead
The Blue Ribbon Committee was
established as a continuing committee that, over time, will conduct
periodic reviews of business and accounting standards, policies and
procedures, the operations of the Accounting Accreditation Committee and
the Accreditation Application Review Committee, the Business Accreditation
Committee and the Candidacy Committee. The committee also will study ad
hoc educational issues that impact AACSB accreditation, and consider
suggested changes from committees and members.
But its first work will be to study many of
the questions described here, prioritize them and think about possible
resolutions that can be recommended to the board and the membership.
Will the outcome be an entirely new set of
standards and a new process, or simply revisions?
Committee members said they still are
unsure of the full scope of the changes and will have to answer some
fundamental questions first. Initial accreditation may look similar to the
way it does now, Kraft said, but reaffirmation would be different.
"It would be based on information that already is available, probably
including performance indicators, student satisfaction and data that will
be collected so schools can compare themselves with their peer group. And,
the process has to be more consultative, rather than a ‘yes’ or
‘no’ decision."
Only campus-based schools of business will
be included in the current review work. "But," said Kraft,
"we probably are going to focus on all activities of those schools
— degree, non-degree, whatever they are involved in."
Unlike the Accreditation Project of the
late 1980s and early 1990s, the plan this time is to produce a proposal
that also includes the process side of it. The pilot schools will try new
processes for a couple of years to see what works.
The standards will be written less
quantitatively, Kraft said, because quantitative standards do not always
work internationally. Student credit hours, for example, don’t have a
lot of meaning in some places, and the definition of "faculty"
varies, thus, fixed measures for those kinds of things do not translate
well.
When the pilot project for international
accreditation looked at which AACSB standards did not fit for
international locations, it cited 80 different places in the standards.
"Rather than us just reworking those, we are trying to come up with
concepts and build the standards around those concepts," Kraft said.
Wyer views this effort as a chance to
create standards and a process that can promote quality across a wide
spectrum of institutions. "I do believe it is possible. It is not
that the committee wants absolute consistency. We learn from working in a
global economy that diversity is enriching. We don’t want cookie cutter
answers. But a lot is known about quality business education, and we can
use that for the benefit of the membership and the benefit of third
parties who use our market signal."
Challenges To Face
Committee members have varying
views of the biggest challenges they will face in producing a draft
recommendation by April 2001. One challenge is to find standards that are
applicable to the current wide variety of educational circumstances.
Kraft said the committee is hoping to
produce standards that can appeal to the diverse membership of AACSB.
"The biggest thing is not to get wrapped up in what the standards are
right now," he said. "We’re probably going to switch to a
system that is more responsive to members’ individual needs."
The biggest challenge, Wyer believes, and
the thing that can’t be done immediately, is to gain global experience.
"AACSB has done some things in the global area, but the organization
doesn’t have 20 years of experience in it," she said. "Finding
out what can be done to achieve a right fit in the global world is the
biggest challenge because that is where all of us individually and AACSB
collectively have less experience.
"There is no magic pill. We will take
a big step in one direction and then discover that we stepped a little too
far to the right and have to step to the left," Wyer said. "It
is the way you have to do it, and nobody does it seamlessly. In the whole
business world, people are still trying to figure out how to globalize
like mad. I don’t think there is anyone who can say, ‘We got it 100
percent.’ The whole world is trying to figure out how to come together
and that is a challenge for everyone, including this group."
Policano said the biggest challenge will be
in the details, when the writing of the standards begins. "How to
measure diverse schools is the issue," he said. "We will come up
against that once we get the conceptual framework written down."
Staying In Communication
Eight years ago, the Internet was
not part of the communications plan for the dispersal of information about
AACSB’s new accreditation standards. This time, a two-part Web site will
be used to communicate about the committee’s work, and to receive
comments, questions, suggestions and advice. The Web site address is http://www.aacsb.edu/accreditation/brc/index.asp.
Within a couple of weeks of each committee
meeting, the BRC Web site will feature position papers, working drafts,
meeting minutes and any other output available. "We will have it open
for anyone who wants to participate," Policano said. "If we
don’t have an open process with our membership, we will have a rocky
road. We want a very open process from the beginning. We will circulate
drafts throughout the membership and include individual schools that would
be representative of Asia, Europe, Latin America and so on."
The committee will make its recommendations
for changes in standards to the board of directors, which, in turn, will
make its recommendations to the Accreditation Council for approval.
Recommended changes in policies and procedures will be approved or
rejected by the board.
The Clock Is Ticking
The draft proposal scheduled for
delivery to the board in April is expected to 1. identify the
committee’s assumptions regarding accreditation standards; 2. provide
draft standards; 3. propose accreditation continuous improvement
processes; and 4. raise any other issues about which the committee needs
additional input. The June 30, 2001, deadline is the date for the final
committee report to be submitted to the board.
Williams views the timetable as ambitious,
but not unrealistic. "We will tackle a number of issues that need to
be addressed now, and there are others of lower priority that will take us
a while to get to. We won’t precisely solve everything. But we will make
a good stab at it," he said.
"Getting it nailed down isn’t as
urgent as raising the questions," said Dalton. "In my view, the
initial role of this committee is to set out some broad brush strokes.
Where are the areas of challenge? What are some preliminary ways in which
they might be addressed, and then take that to the larger forum."
Committee members emphasized that openness
to change, to possible new standards and processes is key to fulfilling
their task.
Stability, rather than more change, may be
what business educators would most desire right now. The stable world of
management education, how-ever, started coming to an end about 10 years
ago.
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