Hello Everyone, I am planning to pursue a doctoral degree. Although I am based in the US, my degrees and education have been the UK, and I am only interested in doing my doctoral through a UK university. Recommendations from fellow friends in my circle have been discouraging me from any program that is NOT AACSB accreditation. Foremost, although I do understand that AACSB is an American accreditation body that provides accreditation to the business programs and it is regarded as the benchmark for business school quality among the academic community. However, it is not an accreditation body that empowers universities to award a degree. University can be recognized by the Secretary of State, a Royal Charter or Act of Parliament to grant degrees as explained by Kizmet. Second, most reputable and high-ranking universities in the UK do not necessarily have AACSB accredited programs. Therefore, I am a bit confused with AACSB accreditation vs. UK universities. Questions: 1. How valuable is AACSB accreditation for universities in the UK? 2. How valuable is a Doctoral degree such as DBA from an accredited UK university but not accredited by AACSB? 3. How many people out there actually completed a doctoral graduate program from a UK university but without AACSB accredited and if so, what has been your employment successes and/or failures? Thank you.
UK accreditation, as you put it, is institutional accreditation. That means it covers the university as a whole. AACSB is something "on top of that" called programmatic accreditation. That means it speaks only of a school's business programmes, and sometimes not even all of them. Because of this, AACSB would be an addition to institutional accreditation, not an alternative to it. As for whether it's valuable, that depends a great deal on what your specific goals are. It may be essential, or it may be mere nice yet not particularly important. So to get a good answer, please tell us why you are interesting in earning a doctorate.
Thank you, Steve, for your response. Truly appreciate it. The reasons are two folds. One, I have a specialized skill-set in Project Management Office (PMO) set-ups, assessments, continuous improvement, etc. I am considering to move into consultancy space gradually. Two, consultancy is an unchartered water for me, therefore, as a back-up, I would like to be able to teach in universities either in the US or Canada. Recently I discovered that several high-ranking UK universities do NOT have AACSB accreditation, that includes Cambridge and Oxford. And I believe that AACSB is an American phenomenon. I believe this because I find that the accreditation system in the US isn't as straight forward as in the UK, which leads to several accreditation issues with American universities and in such circumstances AACSB provides students with a visibility that the programs are of a higher standard whereas in the UK the regulations of programs are tightly regulated (if I am not wrong as I recently had a conversation with a Doctoral Director with a university in the UK). I also find that many business schools in Europe that are not a university yet then to use AACSB to complete with pristine universities. Perhaps I am not seeing the importance of AACSB accreditation to a university in the UK. Any thoughts?
Who is in your circle? Are we talking about department chairs and faculty at AACSB universities? Or random friends? Many U.S. universities advertise "AACSB or equivalent" in their faculty job ads, so that non-AACSB stigma, at least as applied to good foreign universities, is dropping. There are many good universities in the UK that simply don't care about AACSB accreditation. About 20% of all UK biz schools are AACSB; among those that haven't bothered are Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, UCL, Exeter, Manchester, St. Andrews and Edinburgh, and if you had the power to pick each of those universities up, faculty, students, traditions, reputations and all, and plop all eight down in New England, they'd make a fine alternative to the Ivy League, so it's not exactly like AACSB is sine qua non over there. I have to think in academia you can navigate well with a non-AACSB degree, provided it's from a Brit school with a good reputation.
Manchester and Edinburgh do have AACSB accreditation, so my bad. But still, with Oxbridge non-AACSB, heck, point more-or-less holds.
Wouldn't it be accurate to say that EQUIS or AMBA accreditation would be of more concern to a UK business school than AACSB? Oxford, Cambridge, LBS, and Edinburgh, for example, all have both EQUIS and AMBA accreditation.
And so do: Warwick, The Open University, Ashridge, Aston, Cardiff, City, Cranfield, Durham, Henley, Imperial College London, Lancaster, London Business School, Loughborough, Manchester Metropolitan, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sheffield, Birmingham, Bradford, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Strathclyde, and Surrey. AACSB Accredited School Global Listing Note: Some of the above are also triple accredited B-schools (AACSB, AMBA, and EQUIS).
Absolutely so, Generalsnus, AACSB is secondary or tertiary over there. I think the OP's trying to figure out what will work for the U.S. and wondering if a non-AACSB doctorate is worth the time and whether it can open doors to U.S. academia. I think it is and can, provided it's a legitimate school he receives the doctorate from, like Heriot-Watt, Manchester or Leicester (or others). Since many business faculty now have U.S. for-profit doctorates, I have to assume a non-AACSB but Brit-accredited DBA or PhD could surely open doors so long as he shows the propensity to produce academic-quality research.
Sure, major56, lots of Brit schools do (though 4 in 5 don't), I was just saying that a lot of good ones don't. But you pointed out some very good schools that do, Warwick, for example, is elite.
AACSB being the "benchmark of business school quality" is highly debatable. University of South Florida may have AACSB accreditation, but I would take Oxford over USF any day. IMHO, UK universities only bother getting AACSB accreditation because they are trying market to American students, not because it improves the quality of their program. FWIW, Heriot-Watt is not AACSB, AMBA, or Equis, and that hasn't hurt me in getting a job, or getting into a PhD program. That being said, AACSB B-Schools in the US do seem to be an old boys club. When you have hundreds of applicants apply to one job, looking for AACSB on a transcript makes it easy to start filtering through the CVs.
True that, but H-W EBS is a very good program, according to one respected Brit rating, top 5 in accounting, according to all, top quartile or thereabouts in business. In the U.S., it'd be something like Rutgers or Penn State. Not exactly your typical underaccredited school.
While AACSB began in the United States, I believe it it's been endeavoring to go international. But given its American origins, I expect that it's most familiar in the United States and probably of greatest utility there. There are European alternatives that may or may not be roughly equivalent, such as Britain's AMBA and EQUIS. So... though you insist on a British doctoral program, you probably need to give some thought to where you anticipate working subsequently and to what employers expect wherever that is. I think there's a fundamental confusion there. In the United States, the word 'accreditation' in the university context means academic quality assurance. That is NOT the same thing as legal authority to operate a higher education institution. In Britain, a royal charter or act of parliament provides the legal authority for a higher education institution to operate, but it doesn't provide ongoing academic quality assurance. In the United States, the legal process necessary to operate as a higher education institution is provided for by state legislation. In the UK, ongoing quality assurance (accreditation in the American sense) was historically provided by the funding bodies which required that certain standards be met as a condition of continued government funding. But that system was highly fragmented and made no provision for private universities. So in the 1990's I believe, the UK established the quasi-governmental Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (the QAA). Today I believe that legislation might exist that all British degree-granting higher education institutions must be accredited by the QAA. The government funding authorities now defer to the QAA in establishing that standards are met. The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) In the United States, continuing academic quality assurance is provided by a whole assortment of accrediting bodies. So... the British analogy to the American institutional accreditors is not a royal charter or an act parliament, it's the QAA. The rest of your questions concern doctoral level education in business, and that isn't my field. Others can answer those questions better than I can.
Thank you all for your explanations and inputs. I would not be concerned with applying for jobs in the US if the Doctorate degree would not be an AACSB accredited. Mentioning doctorate degree may not come across favourably as I would be deemed overqualified. Therefore, I would not mention on my CV at all. I am in not any senior level position that requires me to do my doctorate. The objective is to gradually move into consulting and as I have mentioned that consulting is an unchartered water for me, then as a back-up, I would like to teach as well. The dilemma that I am in is that if I had an American doctorate degree without AACSB accreditation, then perhaps, it would be of a concern. However, if I have a doctorate degree from UK that is not AACSB accredited, would it be a concern to be able to teach in the US.
Many of these programmatic accreditations are about jacking up tuition. Heriot- Watt was one of the first universities to sound the alarm on this many years ago. Education quality should/could be achieved in other ways. Do these programmatic accreditations offer anything more substantial than none programmatic accreditations except for higher tuition?
I agree with you Phdtobe and, I believe, AACSB is also a membership-based model. Which means there are ongoing incurring fees for the universities to be accredited by AACSB, which results in some way for the universities to add that costs to the students by raising their tuition fees. Correct me if I am wrong, most UK universities would certainly like to avoid these costs since they are already UK Ivy league universities. Another thought that makes so much of sense (correct me fellow readers if it doesn't make sense). Universities like the University of Oxford, which traces its history back to 1096, obviously wouldn't be bothered with AACSB, which was founded in 1916, as it has a long-standing history of great quality education. To me, it really won't matter if any UK university is AACSB accredited as long as they are compliant to QAA standard according to heirophant.
