Business Accreditation
The AACSB Standards Task Force (STF) is comprised of global business education leaders, entrusted with guiding the review and refresh of AACSB’s accreditation standards to ensure their continued relevance and alignment with the future of business education. Learn more about the task force here.
Download the Global Standards for Business Education Exposure Draft and submit your feedback on the proposed standards through 7 February 2026. Please note that these exposure drafts have not yet undergone a formal copy edit. Minor typographical or formatting errors may be present and will be addressed in the final standards.
Global Standards for Business Education Key Changes
- A new structure that distinguishes between global standards and the process of accreditation.
- Teaching as a critical pillar of impact: There is an expectation that faculty in all four categories demonstrate a commitment to high-quality teaching within programs they support as a key component of faculty qualifications.
- Requirement to administer a survey to learners that assesses teaching effectiveness for degree programs.
- Societal impact is central and flexible: Schools have the flexibility to select different societal impact focus areas to tell their impact stories related to curriculum, scholarship, and engagement. For ease of understanding the big picture of societal impact, we have now consolidated societal impact into Standard 9.
- Updated and modernized faculty qualifications: The 2 x 2 faculty qualifications matrix has been replaced with a figure that allows for both vertical and horizontal views within and across categories of faculty. Instructional Practitioner has been renamed “Instructional Academic” to better reflect the role. Practice Academic is proposed to require a minimum of a master’s degree in order to provide an amplified pathway for stronger integration of practice within academia.
- Eligibility criteria are rigorous and quantifiable: Greater rigor is sought to better reflect the expectations of the new Global Standards.
View a comprehensive list of key changes to the business standards here.
Download the Accounting Accreditation Standards Exposure Draft and submit your feedback on the proposed standards through 7 February 2026. Please note that these exposure drafts have not yet undergone a formal copy edit. Minor typographical or formatting errors may be present and will be addressed in the final standards.
Accounting Accreditation Key Changes
- Reordered and modernized the standards to align with the structure of the Global Standards for Business Education.
- Digital Agility is a standalone, strengthened standard: focused not only on what technology is being deployed, but on how technology is being used to solve accounting problems, exercise professional judgment, and respond to real-world accounting contexts.
- Added Standard A6: Impact of Accounting Scholarship which explicitly calls out the expectation that accounting scholarship should meaningfully inform or influence accounting practice, professional standards, regulatory oversight, public policy, governmental and nonprofit accounting, etc.
- Disaggregated the former Table A6 into two distinct tables: 1) Table A3, aligned with Business Standard 3, focusing on the professional qualifications of accounting faculty, and 2) Table A5, aligned with the new Accounting Standard A5 on Digital Agility, focusing on technology expectations in accounting education.
- Increased expectations around professional engagement for all accounting learners.
- Requirement to administer a survey to accounting learners that assesses teaching effectiveness for degree programs.
View a comprehensive list of key changes to the accounting standards here.
In the spirit of continuous improvement, AACSB enhances the accreditation standards and interpretive guidance annually.
On 28 February 2025, AACSB released its annual update which took into consideration the legal and political environment surrounding higher education and accreditation and reframed terms that have become politicized in the U.S. and around the world. These changes to the 2020 Guiding Principles and Standards for Business Accreditation and Interpretive Guidance uphold our mission and values, while mitigating risks for our members. The technical edits also clarified that Scholarly Academic faculty are indeed expected to produce peer-reviewed journal articles as part of their portfolio of scholarship.
AACSB is proud to serve its diverse global network and has issued an open letter to clarify the intent, content, and implications of the changes. You can find more information in the FAQ.
The standards fulfill the following key objectives:
- Reinforce long-held AACSB commitments to mission focus and peer review
- Emphasize a principles-based and outcomes-focused approach, as well as relevance for business schools now and in the future
- Recognize the changing landscape of student demographics and reflect the activities we envision business schools of the future will undertake to ensure continuous improvement and high quality in business education
- Elevate the importance of thought leadership in the context of a school’s mission.
- Characterize the guiding principles that represent key values to AACSB
The nine standards are organized into three categories:
For accounting accreditation standards, click here.