"By going to a non-aacsb business school, you are taking a huge risk."

I also agree with this. I only spoke to ~30 schools recruiting in the last 2 years to become familiar with the environment. I would say about half said the *unknown* would hurt me.

I never said though it was impossible - I just think more difficult. I received many offers after receiving my degree from Grenoble, some from AACSB schools, some without AACSB accreditation. It will just take wording the CV correctly and/or having an in (when presenting and publishing, this should make those issues disppear).

 

Han,

yes. But I recommend anyone interested call him directly for an update status since that has been a couple of years. They already hold ACBSP.

 

We agree. I am tenured at an AACSB-accredited institution and have been on more than a couple of hiring committees. All regular faculty holding a non-AACSB doctorate at my institution were hired long before we achieved AACSB accreditation.

I would like to raise a point that others seem to miss here. Why would a business school go through the trouble and expense to achieve and maintain AACSB accreditation and then take the position that it doesn't matter when hiring faculty?

 

I don't miss your point, but to categorically toss or refuse to accept applicants due to a degree from a non AACSB school goes against the very management principles that AACSB purportedly advocates. That being:

"One of accreditation's guiding principles is the acceptance, and even encouragement, of diverse paths to achieving high quality in management education."

Surely the contention is not that all the best candidates come from an AACSB accredited school? Where is the diversity in this approach?

Further, I doubt if you folks actually take the time to validate degree award date against AACSB accreditation date. If you truly believe that AACSB makes the difference then anyone graduating prior to the accreditation date should be unacceptable.

Does it matter when hiring faculty? I don't know. But from an outside view looking in I believe it shouldn't be a single discriminator for at least competing for a position.

 

The simple answer is: great marketing by AACSB and a strong good old boys network.


jim

 

I doubt that the hiring committee would call to AACSB and verify dates of graduation and compare them with accreditation dates. The AACSB requirement is relatively new and if this was the case, few Harvard PhDs wouldn't make the cut due to degrees earned in the 70s.

I seriously doubt too that a school would toss out a resume from a PhD from McGill University just because is not AACSB accredited.

What about people with Engineering or Statistics degrees teaching at business schools? Would you toss a resume from a PhD in Industrial Engineering from MIT for an operations management teaching position just because it is not from an AACSB business school?

 

So if NCU or Capella graduates cannot teach at most of the schools, where are these hundreds of graduates going after graduation? Why would someone bother to do these degrees if they are not useful?

 

I am completely out of my depth in this but Jim's post (above) makes so much sense that I can't even believe that we don't have some sort of sparkley stuff to rain down on some posts.

Picture this. I'm some hardcore mba who's made a skagillion dollars wherever I've worked. I'm now in semi-retirement. I want to do a little teaching BUT NO ONE WILL LET ME BECAUSE MY MBA WAS NOT PROPERLY ACCREDITED???
Get out of town!

Beyond that------let me ask.
why would someone earn a DBA if not to teach? Are there actually non-academic jobs around where a DBA is required? I'm guessing the answer is "no." In the working world the people on top are the people who get results. Regardless of the letters after their names.

So, if you want a DBA it's so you can get a full-time tenure track teaching job? Why else?

 

In my case, I started teaching about 10 years ago and just started to get more difficult to get contracts without a doctorate. The DBA opened more doors and keep me more employable.

Besides teaching, I really can't find a reason to get one.

 

Maybe not required but definitely highly desired - I've met DBAs and Ph.D. in business areas working on aerospace programs for government, consulting companies, and aerospace companies.

I've also met DBAs working as consultants for medical organizations such as Kaiser. I understand that the banking industry hires lots of DBAs - especially those with lots of math background.

 

As a consultant, I have found that MBA-level consultants usually end up reporting to VPs or lower while Ph.D. and DBAs report to CEO's and boards. The lines of authority also change. Doctorates usually can have staff assigned to them, sometimes warrant an office . . . and so on.


jim

 

OK, so here is the issue - that has not been discussed. 90% of faculty must be AQ or PQ (academically or professionally qualified) - 65% AQ, 25% PQ to be AACSB accredited. If you get a doctorate from an AACSB school, you are automatically AQ for 5 years. So, if you did get a degree from a non-AACSB school - and you obtained AQ status (by publication - varies by school) - then, yes, you would be considered. Also, you may fall under the PQ status, but most of these slots go to PT faculty and lecturers that teach at night, due to their industry jobs.

Most schools BARELY make the percentages, due to budgets (public schools), so it would be a huge risk to hire someone not AQ, epecially with a pool of candidates of ovre 100 per faculty opening (tenure track).

I think Kevin (and maybe others) are raising other points - like the actual value and worth of the AACSB accreditation, which is a seperate discussion IMO. (Jim Lane answered it - great marketing and a good old boys network). But, I would not even start in that discussion, as I think it is a seperate issue, and I know what AACSB is TRYING to do, not sure though if they are actually doing it - but I will digress.

 

We had one at our school (public state school), the others? Maybe industry, some make it to non-AACSB schools, and less make it into the AACSB schools being discussed.

I never said they are not useful - just not as useful as AACSB degrees when applying at AACSB schools....... at non-AACSB schools (and there are many), they are very useful.

 

After speaking with some others in the Grenoble program, during residency, there were some administrators at universities (Assoc Dean, Dean, etc.) and moreso consultants that enhanced their resume. I am not sure all who made it through and what they doing, but that is what they talked about (and many talked about teaching too).

 

Before I decided on UNA for my MBA, I had an interesting discussion during a management training course from the University of Tennessee Center for Executive Eduction. One of the instructors was a professor from Kennesaw State in GA (AACSB accredited). He asked me about my plans for graduate school, and I told him I was leaning toward UNA for my MBA rather than UAH for an MS in Administration. He was incredulous that I would even consider UNA over UAH. I quote, "They are not even accredited" (meaning AASCB).

Made no difference to me or my employer. I wanted the education, and I needed the flexibility that UNA offered.

A different Kevin

 

My experience is that the preference for AACSB-accredited doctorates is for candidates that graduated from US schools. Faculty candidates from Canadian and other non-US universities are evaluated differently.

A point that I think many are missing here is that most of us wouldn't have to verify whether a doctoral granting institution is AACSB accredited. Within a discipline, academia is a very small world. Senior faculty at AACSB-accredited institutions are generally quite familiar with the reputations of US schools that offer doctorates in their discipline. Someone in a department is going to know someone that either teaches at or graduated from a particular US program.

Foreign candidates undergo more scrutiny, but you're correct in that most schools wouldn't question a McGill doctoral holder, or a Harvard alum that obtained their doctorate prior to HBS becoming AACSB accredited.

Engineering and Stats Ph.D.s are an exception to the general rule of hiring faculty from AACSB institutions because while the degrees are relevant to courses taught in the business school, such Ph.D.s cannot be from an AACSB program. This is quite different from a situation from someone presenting a US non-AACSB business degree, where the program cannot or chooses not to achieve AACSB accredititation.

The key phrase here is "acheiving high quality management education." I personally do not believe that ANY existing DL doctoral program in my discipline has the rigor or expectations of any AACSB-accredited program in the discipline. You don't have to look any further than the difference in expected quantitative skills of degree candidates in each learning modality.

There is plenty of diversity in the approaches taken to doctoral education within AACSB schools. There are distinct differences in curriculum, perspective and, dare I say it, quality among AACSB doctoral programs. Diversity is further enhanced by the proportion of faculty that is professionally qualified rather than academically qualified.

 

Kevin,

I sure hope it wasn't this professor:

Faculty Profile

"(PhD) Emphasis on Medical Marketing, from Century University, Albuquerque, NM, 2002."

and:

"serves on the faculty of Kaplan University as Health Care and Operations Management Department Chair; Indiana Wesleyan University, Graduate School of Business, as Professor of Applied Marketing Management; Warren National University, Undergraduate School of Business, as Professor of Marketing Management and Organizational Behavior."

bolded text for emphasis

 

It clearly states that this individual is a "part-time instructor". There is quite the distance between a part-time instructor and a tenured professor.

 

That wasn't the guy, but it seems odd for this guy to be bragging about his association with schools with a less than stellar reputation.

 

Not when claiming a PhD from an unaccredited school and doing so on the school's faculty page. Especially when said school proudly displays and touts its accreditation status while simultaneously allowing the individual to list the degree. Ironic at best.