AACSB - UT Tyler PhD

Discussion in 'Accreditation Discussions (RA, DETC, state approva' started by tangsoodolife, Dec 30, 2018.

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  1. tangsoodolife

    tangsoodolife New Member

    Hello all,

    I was exploring the possibility of going back to school and pursuing my PhD in Human Resources development from the University of Texas at Tyler.

    An academic colleague expressed concern that I’d have trouble securing a tenure track faculty appointment with a PhD from a program like this due to the lack of AACSB accreditation. It should be noted their college of business is accredited but the actual PhD program is not.

    Will I have issues getting hired in the future with this type of degree? I hope to stay working in industry for the duration of the degree program and hoped to find employment afterward as an assistant professor of management at a smaller four year college.

    Thanks in advance for any and all advice you might offer!
     
    FTFaculty likes this.
  2. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    Hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong but I think that AACSB accredits schools, not programs. If that's true then you should be all set.
     
    FTFaculty and tangsoodolife like this.
  3. tangsoodolife

    tangsoodolife New Member

    See! That’s what I thought too! I really hope that is the case, because that would make my life so much easier!

    Anyone out there know?
     
    FTFaculty likes this.
  4. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    Far as I know, you're dead on right, Kizmet. Once they accredit the school (i.e., the college of business), far as I know, that's saying the programs are up to the standards. If they didn't think the programs were up to snuff, they wouldn't accredit the school.
     
  5. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    AACSB accredits a school's business and accounting programs separately.
     
  6. JoshD

    JoshD Well-Known Member

    AACSB should accredit the school not an individual program. They do however accredit the business and accounting programs separately.
     
  7. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    Yep, that's right. It's not the particular degree programs within the schools of accountancy, though, that they accredit, such as the bachelor's in accountancy, MACCs, PhDs, etc. But you are right, a school can pursue separate school of accountancy accreditation. By the way, even though I'm in such a school that's separately accredited, I don't know why the AACSB makes this distinction, and I'm not sure anyone would notice the difference between a business school that was AACSB with a school of accountancy that wasn't separately accredited from one that was. If you have a degree in accountancy from a college of business that's AACSB, does anyone know or care whether or not your school has pursued separate SOA accreditation? And why not separate with other disciplines? Why not with information systems or marketing or finance or economics? Does anyone know the answer? Do you, Steve? I ask that honestly, because I swear I have no clue.
     
    Last edited: Jan 1, 2019
  8. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Nope. I could speculate, but it would only be that.
     
  9. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    I'll think out loud. Separate accreditation for business and accountancy . . . they would seem to be separate skill sets and so different coursework, instructors, etc. It's easy to see how one department might be solid and the other less so. It would be interesting to know if the accreditation criteria are the same for both subjects. As for "Does anyone know or care..." Often times people specifically choose these AACSB programs because they imagine teaching at some point. They places they would teach will be intimately acquainted with the accreditation process and so would certainly understand these distinctions, probably more so than we do.
     
  10. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    Probably right.
     
  11. foobar

    foobar Member

    The short answer is that AACSB separately accredited accounting programs as a preemptive strike against American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) accreditation. The AICPA made noises (I believe in the 1970s) about accrediting accounting programs reasoning that the AMA accredits medical schools, the ABA accredits law schools, and so on. It seems that business deans had a real problem with the thought of losing their accounting departments (and their CPA firm donors) and pushed AACSB to separately accredit accounting programs before the AICPA proposal got any traction.

    The push for AICPA accreditation was part of an overall schools of accountancy movement. Accounting is the only discipline in a business school that is associated with a licensed and organized profession and the thought was that an accounting program housed in the business school did not have sufficient autonomy to respond to the needs of the profession. This was, has been, and is still a source of tension between accounting departments/schools and business schools/colleges.

    With some exceptions, accounting programs are required to adopt the business school's core curriculum. The problem is that the curriculum is designed for a corporate rather than public accounting environment. Some schools do specify alternative core courses for accounting majors but many don't. Another issue is that marketing, management and human resources professors on college curriculum committees didn't necessarily see the urgency of adjusting curriculum to meet accountancy board requirements for the CPA exam, or to respond to what was being demanded by CPA firms.

    At many, if not most AACSB schools, accounting has a formal, organized recruiting process that starts in the first semester of the junior years, and in some schools, earlier or internships and a clear path to professional employment. Students must be advised not just on graduation requirements, but on the courses they should have completed at certain points in the recruitment process.

    There is a reason that law schools, medical, and engineering programs are independent. Many of the same reasons apply to accounting.

    --There is accounting history literature on the schools of accountancy movement - I didn't have time to dig it out
     
  12. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    Thanks--I learned something today. By the way, you just described my school and the way the accounting program works, like you were sitting here with me in the office, hanging out at Accounting Day and Meet the Firms recruiting events, listening to the complaints of our Accounting Advisory Board, sitting in on the College of Business meetings hearing the curriculum committee debates about core requirements and the tension between accounting and other disciplines. Are you an accounting prof?
     

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