The first step in the accreditation process is to establish membership with AACSB. To apply for membership, please complete our membership application, then email the completed and signed application to membership@aacsb.edu for processing. Additional details about membership are available at aacsb.edu/membership/educational.
Once membership is established, a school should familiarize its faculty and administration with the AACSB accreditation standards and the accreditation journey. To proceed into the accreditation process, the next step is to submit an eligibility application. Details on how to submit the eligibility application are available at aacsb.edu/accreditation/resources/business/eligibility-and-application.
Eligibility applications are accepted at any time. Schools are encouraged to provide a draft of their eligibility application to AACSB staff for review. AACSB staff will check for completeness and any potential concerns. Once the eligibility application is complete, the Initial Accreditation Committee (IAC) will review the application at the next scheduled meeting. For meeting dates and applicable deadlines, please visit aacsb.edu/accreditation/volunteers/committees.
Eligibility applications are due to the committee at least two months in advance of the meeting. If approved, a mentor will be assigned to help guide the school through the initial accreditation process.
Many schools find it useful to send their staff to the Business Accreditation Seminar, which offers an in-depth overview of the initial accreditation process and the 15 business accreditation standards. Additionally, the small group (approximately 50 participants per seminar) allow for detailed conversation and specific questions related to each school’s situation, as well as comprehension of the overall process requirements.
AACSB has a complaint policy that includes the process for filing a complaint with AACSB against an AACSB-accredited institution. An excerpt from the policy states all complaints should:
1. Identify the specific accreditation standard(s) relevant to the complaint 2. Provide documentation that supports the complaint 3. Identify the complainant 4. Provide permission to share the complaint with the member institution 5. Identify the relationship of the complainant to the member school
Complaints should be submitted via email to AACSB at accreditation@aacsb.edu. AACSB will acknowledge receipt of complaints within 30 days, but it will not respond to complaints that are not submitted in writing nor will it respond to anonymous complaints. Once the complaint is submitted as indicated above, our chief accreditation officer will review it and determine how to proceed.
Our complaint policy is available at aacsb.edu/accreditation/resources/policies-and-procedures.
The accreditation standards are available at aacsb.edu/accreditation/standards.
We make every effort to organize peer review teams with members who speak the primary language spoken at the school, but because there is no guarantee that the peer review team members will speak the school's primary language, all salient documents will need to be translated into English. This will also help the committee members who may not speak the language. While there is no expectation that all documentation be translated into English, documents that will assist the PRT (and subsequently the committee) in rendering an accreditation decision should be available in English. All accreditation documents, such as the eligibility application, iSER, final SER, etc., must be in English. Examples of supporting documents that should be in English are the faculty members’ curriculum vitae (CVs), but all of the journal articles or other intellectual contributions do not need to be translated into English. Assurance of learning summary reports should be in English; however, meeting minutes and student work are not expected to be translated. Other examples of materials that should be translated include faculty handbooks, which will help a committee and team understand how faculty are managed; codes of conduct; student handbooks; a sample of syllabi; brochures (although not all); and student/alumni evaluations that a school may have distributed to get feedback.
To help in cases where team members do not speak the language spoken at the school, it is common for the school to have a translator either present for the entire visit or parts of the visit in which participants do not speak English.
On average, we observe that schools take between four and five years to earn AACSB Accreditation. The amount of time it will take a school to earn accreditation depends largely on how closely aligned they are with AACSB standards when they apply for eligibility.
Each individual can update his or her information by accessing myAACSB. Individuals noted as Official Contacts for AACSB purposes should submit an Official Contact Change form to membership@aacsb.edu. For more information, official organization contact definitions, and to access the contact change form, please visit the updating your information page.