New AACSB Standards

Re: Dedicating resources

As Andy said, most schools do not put the resources behind the programs, but when they do they can do quite well.

Colorad State is a good example, almost every department has a full time DL coordinator, they have full time staff at the college level just for the DL component. And they have the technological resources backing it all up.

While I will admit there have been some glitches during this first year of course work (some on my part, some on thiers) I have always been able to reach a human and get it resolved fairly quickly.

One thing they have done is integrate the use of technology into the regular program. Most lectures are video taped (switching to VCD's) and regular students can view the tapes if they want during the year. Also many programs that use the internent (WebCT) aslo have the regular students use it at the same time.

Of course they have doing this for several years (the Industrial Engineering PhD programgoes back to 1985).

And they have an AACSB accredited program that offers an MBA by distance learning.

Colorad State

 

Re: Re: Dedicating resources

I am attending TU, which has a great DL MBA, Drexel has one, Florida State, etc. ....

I think the exciting part about TUI is two things - a fully DL college, and a DL AACSB DOCTORAL program..... it is in my dreams!

 

Andy: "If the entire world is against DL, there may be a reason. Far too many schools look at DL as a "pot of gold" to make a profit margin on. Too few school deploy the resources (including faculty and library) that quality graduate business education requires."

Included in the reasons why Schools do not put the resources behind DL is that the faculty that decide on these things do not understand it, they are hidebound by traditional on-campus pedagogy and (as you say) enter DL to make money (which most of them will not). On the "accreditation" side, the accreditors do not understand distance learning either and judge excellence as if a DL Business School is merely a replication of what is needed to form a campus Business School. It is much more than that.

The new AACSB standards are a sign of ice melting, but slowly.

The features it seeks out to evaluate are correct at one level but misleading at the other. Example, "faculty and library". There is no need to use low quality faculty - top faculty can write specially prepared high quality DL texts (using standard textbooks is not a substitute) covering the researched content that in MBAs the managers need to be able to apply to their businesses. Frontier research in a subject discipline is not germane to an MBA (it is to a MSc or PhD). Similarly, a campus library is not germane to an MBA - if students can get to a campus they may not need a DL mode, and when they cannot get to a campus, you exclude from the programme the very target audience that DL self-study is designed to serve!

"Adjunct faculty" are unnecessary too. EBS has over 10,000 DL students and our on-line webs boards are managed by nine fulltime faculty, who grade 20,000 plus exam scripts a year (4 exam diets) too.

The absence of researched pedagogy in most universities leads to 'video' lectures (low learning value; more illusory than substance, like graduates wearing 19th century UK style mortar board caps to pretend to a tradition, long since abandoned, and like UK judges' court wigs and breeches). As bad, are the on-line courses, again not researched and mainly driven by what IT specialists think about how people learn, resulting in expensive production which will never repay their cost, Unext), or poor substitute learning experiences that do not help people learn.

From this perspective AACSB has some ways to go, but a start is always worthwhile and I await the next few stages with interest.

 

While a "campus library" is not germane to DL MBA students, an on-line library is very important. The quality of one's education is largely a function of the educational "diet" one consumes. This boils down to faculty and library resources. Low quality, part-time adjuncts with no long term commitment to the institution that teach from standard textbooks (without library support) are IMHO clearly inferior. Committed faculty that demand students read good literature (not only textbooks) offer a much better "diet".

Some schools do very well in providing on-line libraries. NSU's collection (and library support), for example, are excellent. But this sort of support isn't cheap - nor is it typical in the DL world.

This is quite amazing - your model of graduate education certainly is quite different than what I have worked with. I don't doubt that this provides value to your students. I imagine they must have a very high level of self-motivation to complete such a program.

At the same time I have to wonder if this model is the best for many students. Indeed, the top rated business schools in the world educate students in traditional classrooms. While DL (either exam based or class based) may work for some - it is hard to argue that traditional classrooms have no place in this world.

Regards - Andy

 

Campus is differetn from DL

Andy

DL is different from campus education. That is the first thing we must recognise. Trying to force DL into a campus mould does not work. "Low quality, part-time adjuncts with no long term commitment to the institution that teach from standard textbooks (without library support) are IMHO clearly inferior. " I completely agree, that is why EBS uses neither "adjunct faculty" nor "standard Text books.

Our model of graduate education currently is confined to the MBA (from October we extend the model to our DBA). "I imagine they must have a very high level of self-motivation to complete such a program." Agreed. That is a hole in one! Their average age is 38, they are in senior jobs and they want to succeed, but so far no workable model of DL for them addresses their needs.

"it is hard to argue that traditional classrooms have no place in this world." Absolutely correct. DL will never replace traditional classroom programmes - people who talk as if it will are talking rot. DL addresses those able adults whose lifestyle, work and family commitments, mobility or sheer distance from a top School requires that the MBA/DBA programme caters for self-learning.

We know our model works - after ten years research into how people learn about business and ten years trying the materials out in Executive programmes (1972-91) we went live. After the DBA, we will go into DL taught masters programmes in single subjects.

My criticism of campus models is that the people who impose these on a DL environment do not know what they are doing and those who bring campus mentalities to their DL models have not done the research to justify their strictures. This is what AACSB in the US and AMBA in Britain are doing, but slowly they are having to adjust to the realities of DL (or their supporting institutions go bust and give up).

I cannot pretend that even my own university is fully aware of these points, but it is an empirical issue: which model works by being both highly efficient and highly rigorous in its assessments of the candidates' performance (our tough exam regime - no 'easy rides' here) and cost effective. As an educational charity all our surpluses are re-invested in the programmes. On both counts we pass the tests.

 

@ Professor K.: maybe a slight little bit too much advertising, don´t you think so?

btw: all of the top EU MBA programs have either AACSB, AMBA or EQUIS accreditation (some of them even all three of them). any school not being accredited by one of those accreditors will in the long run never be considered as top class, only as "good average", as most of the state university degrees in great britain, e.g.
it´s marketing, nothing more. not quality assurance. quality assurance already does the royal charter (or any other state authority in the other EU countries).

your school, Professor K., dares quite a lot when increasing tuition fees like you´re doing right now, without having any of the major accreditations. major newspapers and magazines write more and more about the need for accreditation - be it justified or not, that´s not the question - so that anyone really informing himself about MBA programs will most likely compare price, mode and kind of accreditation. your biggest competitive advantage up till now is the price, since the mentioned top schools cost a lot more - but when you really increase tuition fees, you will also get into different competition. and the top schools - even the US ones - start building branch campuses in the EU, and GB schools use partner universities on the continent to market their programs and give their degrees. A lot of them even go in the DL market, so that in the next years accreditation will become more and more an issue also in good old Europe - even though it was (/is) not too important up till now...

think about that.

(i don´t doubt a minute your program is a good one, but please: do your comments a little, just a little, less advertising like, ok?)

m.

 

Hi Master

I welcome your comments and would like to ask if you could therefore help me.

How do we conduct a discussion about fundamentally different approaches to distance learning and self-study programmes that are attested by their institutions to be worthy of degree status?

To back my assertions I do two things, which at present you do not do. First, I identify myself and my institution on all Boards to which I contribute; I do not hide behind pseudonyms or aliases. This precludes unattributed insults, outright falsehoods and wild claims that have no basis in fact. Naturally, I pay a small 'price' for this in hurtful/joke e-mails to my institution, etc.

Second, I offer evidence based on actually running a Business School with a large distance learning component and a knowledge of other Schools and their faculties from 31 years contact with them. In offering evidence I have to refer to my institution. You call this "advertising". It certainly is not intended to be and, given the strong stream on this Board in favour of 'soft exams' or 'no exams' (and today, exams that are not 'proctored'), I would not think I could be accused of 'marketing' an option likely to find a favourable response from most of our readers.

I am trying to discuss the issues associated with DL. It is those issues that are important to me, not a few student recruits here and there - I know of no one who has joined the EBS MBA from this Board, though one joined it from another Board to which I contribute, but that was a wild card exception.

Your assertions in your message are worth addressing, though I do not know the authority, research or experience that leads you to be so confident about the future for Business Schools in Europe (do you work in one?).

Price is not our competitive advantage (if it is, it would always be available to us). In DL it is our low costs, scale and our flexibility, combined with proven credibility of the output.

You are betting the farm on "accreditation", to which all the top schools are players in the same marketing agencies. When they are all in the main three, what do they do, form a fourth, fifth? As all "unofficial "accreditation" agencies (AMBA, AACSB, Equis) are having to accommodate to the increasing need for flexibility by adjusting their criteria towards that with which we started in 1991, the option of "accreditation" by any of them is open to us in future.

From MBA economics you would know that the price-quantity demand curve slopes downwards - raise price, fewer sold. However, you will also know that the demand curve can shift outwards - higher price, larger quantity sold. It is an empirical question whether the demand curve is going to shift (outwards or inwards) or we are going to up or down it. I would have expected you to package that with your predictions as to the future, bearing in mind that from MBA Marketing you would know that the "product" on offer has also been enhanced substantially from "print only" to "print plus e-supported learning". That too changes the game - and it is a game that has only just begun.

I think about these things, including "accreditation" all the time. It's my job "Master", not a part-time hobby. I am always looking for other professionals in the DL business to discuss these structural matters. Discussions in the abstract will not suffice; we have to get down to cases and that means the different practices of different Business Schools.

Could you suggest a "Health Warning" with which I can head my posts so as to avoid your (in my view) unfair charge of "advertising"?

Kind regards

 

"As all "unofficial "accreditation" agencies (AMBA, AACSB, Equis) are having to accommodate to the increasing need for flexibility by adjusting their criteria towards that with which we started in 1991, the option of "accreditation" by any of them is open to us in future."

This is not my interpretation of the proposed new AACSB standards. If anything, exactly the opposite. They are proposing to tighten the standards for DL.

 

Mboston

That is one way of looking at it. Another is to see from what position the 'tightening' of the rules begins.

The "accreditation" agencies once only confined themselves to full time on campus programmes only, and of specific duration (2 years), faculty requirements and process (class room teaching).

Then they softened the duration criterion and admitted tight verisons of part-time programmes (4 years). On these they impose faculty, library, doctoral, job search and other criteria.

Then they admitted some versions of distance, off-campus programmes, complete with heavy restrictions on faculty, library, doctoral, job search and other criteria. This last looks to be 'tightening' on one level but, in context, it is liberalisation.

All moves to 'soften' by extending qualifying candidates are also 'tightening' because they exclude some potential providers.

The tendency goes on. In the UK AMBA "accreditation" agency, this has reached quite gentle criteria as far as MBA programmes are concerned. It is unlikely that any provider operating at a modest scale (80 FT; 200 PT and 500+ DL) from a Royal Charter university does not meet the minimum criteria laid down by AMBA. Many of those that still don't reach it are probably going to remain sub-standard.

This will happen in the liberalisation of AACSB - is happening as new criteria for DL is introduced. For those whose criteria are trying to "catch-up" with the AMBA criteria as they move away from what they have at present, their position is different from those institutions who criteria is the destination to which AMBA (and AACSB) are moving. For the latter it is only a matter of time before theirs and the "accrediation" agencies are in alignment.

Hence, my prediction. As current trends continue - and the pedagogy/technology frontiers overlap - joining the "accrediation" game remains a viable option, should it be decided by the institutions concerned.

 

This was great information, Professor Kennedy, thank you for the detail!