Does AACSB matter if you aren't going to teach?

The quote in question was a response to edowave's comment, which referred to accreditation agencies, professional organizations, and industry. I can expand it to show the intended meaning, which was apparently not clear from the context:

It may or may not be a profoundly insightful point, but I expect you would agree.

 

OK. But is the current level of "diversity" genuinely good for the MBA degree? Or has it devalued the MBA degree?

Right now, there are about 120,000 MBAs issued in the US per year, by hundreds (thousands?) of schools, operating under a wide variety of accreditation standards (AACSB, ACBSP, IACBE, RA-only, NA-only, state-licensed but unaccredited, etc). If you like academic diversity, well, there's no doubt that the MBA offers far more variety than other professional, graduate-level degrees.

The question is whether the MBA has become so "diverse" that it no longer really means anything. I am not an MBA myself, but my impression is that many MBAs do regard this as a real concern. And this is probably exactly why the CMBA folks envisioned a potential market for their certification service.

 

I am surprised that I seem to be the only one that foresees a real problem. I'm sorry to say but many MBA programs, especially those in DL, just plain suck. For-profits in particular are really damaging the view of DL and the MBA degree. Do you guys honestly think that the public is not going to wise-up. Employers are already figuring out that the many of the grads from these schools don't cut it.

Check-the-box MBAs "for the business card" are nearly fraudulent in my view. There is so much chatter on these boards about the quickie easy cheepo degrees so they can call themselves an "MBA" - it is a real shame. Taking a "class" from someone with a degree mill "doctorate" at Aspen is not my idea of "diversity".

So, in summary, yes - "diversity" has gone too far. (in my opinion )

 

Just spoke to SMC, NCU, USC and a few adjucts and .......

Here are some other items to confuse me further:

At SMC:

· The program is provided entirely online. The only residential requirement (2 days) is the Final Grand Exam and Dissertation Defense upon completion of all required seminars vis-à-vis the Academic Committee. This can be pursued optionally at UM in Santiago or at SMC in Vevey.

· Swiss Management Center is a candidate for accreditation at ACBSP (CHEA recognized) for national accreditation. Full accreditation is expected in late Summer/Fall 2007. They currently do not have any short-term plans for regional accreditation in the United States. The dual DBA is with Universidad Mayor who is a candidate for RA accreditation.

$14,000 for the dual DBA

Actually looks like a great deal if it fits into my plans.

At NCU:

Same story as always, they will definitely accept me. RA, pros and cons , no one really SEEMS to respect them in academia but what do those people know. Can't please everybody.

Cost is about $25,000. No residency or travel at all.

USC has an executive education program that deals with teaching in AACSB schools without a Doctorate and they told me that in AACSB schools 50% of faculty have to have terminal degrees. The others can teach with a Masters and have relevant experience that qualifies them as ( I think ) professionally accredited to teach.

That actually gives us executives with experience a great deal of hope if we want to go the NA route ala DETC.

Some Pepperdine professors told me that I could teach right now, some are a bit more snobbish although the hiring guy for Law and Ethics thinks I am qualified as is and he is a greater influence on me than the other faculty.

With all this said I am SOOOO tempted to continue with my original plan of SMC/Universidad Mayor.

I am going to make a decision by the end of this month no questions asked because I have to get on with it.

Thanks for all of your input.

 

Some folks are understandably concerned about the CMBA and WGU, and maybe a little extra perspective would be of interest. . .

When I was working as a lead for a group of help desk and networking support technicians, I was fond of telling them about the value of external validation-- that is to say, things such as certifications and degrees. These things, no matter how talented you are, are a way of demonstrating that some impartial third-party examiner outside of you and your boss have verified your knowledge/skills.

That's what the CMBA is. It is an external validation apart from your regular education that demonstrates that you meet a certain criteria.

WGU is centered on a competency-based approach and a career-oriented degree curriculum. Therefore, WGU has graduates validate against set external criteria (which in turn, meets industry expectations) to demonstrate competencies attained.

I've been following WGU for a while. They have been using external criteria for competency assessment since they started, from what I can tell. The best demonstration of this is their IT program, which uses such certifications as Microsoft and Java to demonstrate attained competencies.

The WGU MBA program is somewhat new, as is the CMBA. I would suspect that if there were a more established competency measurement available than the CMBA, WGU would have deployed the alternative. At this point, not only is the CMBA better than nothing given the options, but having a designated set of students run it through its paces every year (WGU students) gives the CMBA organization an opportunity to gauge its progress.

In the case of the WGU/CMBA relationship, folks should give them time to see how things work out. I would imagine that WGU would move to another assessment mechanism should CMBA falter.

On to the CMBA. . . I like the idea-- kind of like a "bar exam" for MBA seekers. However, I would be intrigued to see something like the CMBA that would allow non-MBA students (or pre-MBA students) to gauge/validate their knowledge against an MBA skillset.

The CMBA is no threat to diversity in education. It is just an alternative means to validating knowledge/skills, much as competency-based education like WGU is an alternative methodology. There's plenty of room for all of these things to coexist.

 

That I don't know...and responses...

That is a valid point. I don't know how much weight they give to each question or type of question of the six hour exam. I only know that it was extremely difficult. The questions weren't arcane knowledge tests. They didn't pick a paragraph out of some middle 19th century text and test it. The questions were stuff that I should have (and in fact did as it turns out) learned how to do during my MBA program. I can't give you any examples right now but you can get an idea from the cert prep book. When I said they get harder, that was really a gut impression. I don't know that the test bank is set up to generate questions based on previous answers. I just know that while I saw a few repeat questions throughout the exam the only questions that seemed to repeat were routine definition-based knowledge questions. There weren't too many of them. What changed were the solution questions, each time I retook a part of the exam all of the solutions were different. And not only the solutions (as in numbers) but also the nature of the problem. For me, in hindsight, it would have been easier to have been 100% prepared the first time than to have retaken the exam and been continually required to "retool" my test taking process each time. They were testing extensions of the same concepts and because they were extensions of core concepts the problems may indeed have become more arcane in that respect.

Now because I'm not the greatest genius in the world, your results may vary I can only report that actually passing was an achievement and that taking it was frightening to say the least. If we licensed MBAs using something like the CMBA, I guarantee we'd have better quality MBAs and those of you who think the sky is falling because of the number of programs wouldn't have to worry.

DL does dillute the value of the MBA as it does for any credential. This is only because of the increase in supply of teaching services resulting from the pressure from business and government for more business-savvy employees.

I'd be interested in the experiences of other CMBA holders.

About the tweaking, I know for a fact that the AoCMBA is constantly tweaking the process. When I started, the passing score was 50%. By the time I reached the stage of taking the exam myself they had raised the passing score to 50.5%. And if you don't think that .5% matters, consider that at one point I failed by a grand total of .2% and I was never out by more than 6% ever. In my mind this proved that I was indeed basically competent (according to their extremely rigorous standard of competency) but needed a little further tweaking myself to break the barrier. I ended up passing by a very small amount, so small in fact that I'm quite ashamed of it.

More responses later.

Jacob

 

More responses...

You're absolutely right on both points. Not only are external validation essential to learning and personal growth but there is no indication to see the CMBA as a threat of any kind to education. Even if the CMBA was enforced by all colleges at once (like WGU does), it is designed to measure competency in subject areas (like the SAT, ACT, or GRE do).

The existence of these subject area tests have never actually forced a "teach to the test" mentality. This is simply because it is nearly impossible to get a 36 on the ACT or the maximum possible score in whatever test - meaning that you have a perfect subject matter knowledge of the tested material. While there are companies who offer ACT and GMAT preparation, I'd suspect that this CMBA will simply be another exam that schools and employers can use to determine which MBA is most useful to their organization or program.

Let me give you an example based on my experience:
According to my skills profile that the ICI built for me I'm average with organizational behavior, macroeconomics, and operations. I'm excellent at strategy, microeconomics, financial accounting, and quantitative methods. I'm slightly weaker at managerial accounting, finance, and marketing (all the things I hated to learn in college). Taken at face value this should indicate that I probably shouldn't try to be a salesman or a banker because that's where my weaknesses show but that I know my economics and GLs pretty well making me an effective c-level employee. Whad'dya know? That's what I am now...

Anyway, Sue or Jimbo might be better marketers or financiers than I am. They have their place. I have mine.

That means to me that with this set of examinations we can now effectively differentiate between the Marketing MBAs, the Banking MBAs, the Economics MBAs, the Strategy MBAs, the Controller MBAs, the Operations MBAs, and whatever else was in that list above...

That's all I have to say about the subject for now.

Jacob

 

Could you provide the source of your information regarding Proctor & Gamble. I've done a search of the P&G site for AACSB including the career listings and was unable to find any reference to MBA's requiring AACSB accreditation. There are 32 job listings requiring an MBA.

 

The only think a quick Google search brings up is this article. There is a reference to it near the bottom of the article.

http://www.ithaca.edu/ithacan/articles/0410/07/news/4business_sch.htm

I have no idea of the validity of the quote.

 

I don't agree. DL does not dilute the value of the MBA, especially for the better programs. The value of the MBA degree is tied to the school, accreditation and other student-related factors.

Dave