Processes and Procedures

The first step in the accreditation process is to establish membership with AACSB. To apply for membership, please complete our online membership application. Additional details about membership are available at aacsb.edu/membership/educational. The AACSB membership team can be reached at [email protected].

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 school should attend a mandatory Eligibility application (EA) Workshop to assess its accreditation readiness and better prepare for the accreditation journey. The schedule for the EA Workshop is found here: Eligibility Application Workshop. Participants have up to two years from the date of the EA Workshop to submit their eligibility application. After two years, the school will need to attend another EA Workshop to be eligible to apply.

Eligibility applications are accepted at any time. Schools are encouraged to attend a regularly scheduled Q&A session complimentary for workshop attendees where AACSB staff are available to address questions on their eligibility application. Once the eligibility application is complete and submitted to the Eligibility Review Committee (ERC), AACSB staff will check for completeness and any potential concerns. The ERC will review the application at the next scheduled meeting. Meeting dates and applicable deadlines are available here.

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 nine business accreditation standards. Additionally, the small group allows for detailed conversation and specific questions related to each school’s situation, as well as comprehension of the overall process requirements.

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.  The faculty members’ curriculum vitae (CVs) should be in English, 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; marketing materials (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.

All formal complaints must be submitted through AACSB’s official online complaint form (submissions via email are not accepted): https://aacsb.jotform.com/260695802609060

AACSB’s complaint policy, including full details on the process and requirements, is available on page 36 of the Accreditation Policies and Procedures Handbook located here.  

All complaints should:

1. Identify the complainant and their relationship with the institution;
2. Identify the relevant AACSB guiding principle(s) and/or accreditation standard(s) and describe the lack of alignment;
3. Provide supporting documentation, including (if applicable) evidence of the complaint being pursued through the institution’s internal channels and the outcome;
4. Identify the timeframe during which the incident or concern occurred.

If you have questions after reviewing the form and policy, you may contact us for general guidance at [email protected].

The accreditation standards are available here.

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. On average, we observe that schools take between five and six years to earn AACSB Accreditation.

Individuals can update information by accessing myAACSB. Individuals noted as Official Contacts for AACSB purposes should submit an Official Contact Change form to [email protected]. For more information, official organization contact definitions, and to access the contact change form, please visit the updating your information page.