Hi folks. Is there kind of a "ranking" of the various accreditation possibilities? In many American websites, it is said that Regional Accredition is what matters most - how come than that the European Governments mostly just accept U.S. degrees (especially for the MBA degree) by the AACSB, and not by ACSBP and/or the regional accreditors (that is to say that a person earned a non-AACSB-degree is NOT ALLOWED to lead that title in Germany, Austria, etc., otherwise he can be punished by law and has to pay a lot of money!). Does anyone know?
In my mind there are three level of accrediation for business schools in the U.S. today. The top programs are both regionally accredited and AACSB accredited. To be in this bucket you have to meet some pretty tough requirements and have a research producing faculty. The second tier of schools are regionally accredited and have either ACBSP or IACBE (or both) accreditation. To be in this bucket you have to go through site visits by business educators and maintain certain standards - like a 70% PhD count and minimum curriculum standards. The third tier are regionally accredited schools that have no business professional accreditation. A number of the on-line programs that get discussed in various ng's fall in this category. The negative thing here is that such programs don't have to live up to business school curriculum standards. Thanks - Andy
One thing to bear in mind is that you can't get AACSB without already having regional accreditation. You're comparing apples and oranges. Now comparing AACSB and ACBSP makes sense. In this case, it appears that the German government (and I won't comment on any other European government) has decided that AACSB is more reputable. Tom Nixon
