This is an email from another forum: Does it show a stronger chance for Touro to get AACSB? Interesting article from the Chronicle this week on AASCB accreditation: Business-School Accrediting Group Adopts New Standards, Providing More Leeway on Faculty Qualifications By KATHERINE S. MANGAN New Orleans Business schools will have more flexibility to determine who is qualified to teach, but also a new burden of proving what students have learned, under new accreditation standards approved on Friday. The revised standards were the featured attraction at the annual meeting of AACSB International: The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, which drew 1,200 participants from 40 countries. The standards were approved overwhelmingly, by a voice vote, despite concerns by some educators that the association had watered them down in order to accommodate the growing number of foreign business schools seeking accreditation. Many of those business schools -- which like others in the association offer both undergraduate and graduate programs -- use more part-time professors than would be allowed under current accreditation standards. Among the major changes: Instead of prescribing how many full-time, or doctorally-trained, professors a business school must have, the new standards require schools to prove that at least three-quarters of the program is taught by faculty members who actively participate in students' education. A part-time instructor who advises students outside the class and serves on committees could qualify as a "participating" faculty member, while an adjunct who simply shows up to teach a class would not. Under the old standards, at least 75 percent of instruction had to be offered by full-time professors, most of whom were expected to have doctorates. Business schools will be reviewed every 5 years instead of every 10, but the process will involve less time and paperwork. The new version has 21 standards instead of 41. Business schools will have to set goals for what they want their students to learn, and then create ways of measuring whether they've succeed. The new standards leave it up to each institution to decide what those goals should be and how they should be measured. "Your curriculum should be unique to your institution," said Jerry E. Trapnell, chairman of the association and dean of the Clemson University College of Business and Behavioral Science. "The AACSB isn't going to be the ogre or the hammer." But some business deans weren't comfortable being given so much leeway. "I get the sense that you're softening your standards," said James A. Schweikart, dean of a three-year-old business school at Rhode Island College. He plans to eventually seek accreditation for his program, but would like to strengthen it first. He worries that when he asks the college administration for more money to hire professors with doctorates, he'll have a hard time making his case if the association no longer requires it for accreditation. "The tendency, during these times of budget cuts, is to take the cheapest route possible," he said, adding, "I need a club, not a stick." Diane Schooley-Pettis, associate business dean at Boise State University, worried that, by eliminating the requirement that business schools maintain a set ratio of full-time faculty members to students, the association might tempt financially strapped institutions to increase class sizes. The association's director of accreditation, Milton R. Blood, insisted that even though the new standards give business schools more flexibility in hiring, the standards are actually tougher than the old ones. "Instead of just looking at whether faculty members are full-time or part-time, we want to know how engaged they are in the life of the school," said Mr. Blood. The revised standards will also help schools that are struggling to recruit enough faculty members with doctorates, he added. While the demand for business education continues to rise, the number of students pursuing business doctorates dropped 19 percent from 1994-1995 to 1999-2000. Not only should business schools be free to rely more on part-timers, but they should have the freedom to design their own curriculums, association officials said. Some business professors would like to see an exception in the case of ethics, to require a stand-alone course on that topic, but the new standards don't require such a course. Instead, they list ethics as a topic that should be prominent in business courses, and they encourage business schools to develop a code of ethical conduct for professors and students (The Chronicle, January 8). One of the underlying goals of the new standards is to give business schools around the world the flexibility to design programs that match their missions, and not to force them to conform to an outdated American model. The number of foreign business schools seeking accreditation has grown substantially since the association began accrediting schools outside of North America in 1997. Currently, 45 of the 451 business schools accredited by the association are based outside the United States, and about 80 more are seeking accreditation. James T. Wright, dean of business at the University of São Paulo, in Brazil, said the more flexible standards would allow foreign business schools with different hiring practices to gain accreditation. "We hire a lot of practitioners as part-time professors to team teach with academically-qualified professors," he said. "The new standards recognize that there are a lot of different ways that you can achieve the same results without losing rigor or quality."
I think that this may help, but they will still have to go through the entire process and we won't see awarding of accreditation for at least 3-4 years. My question is - for schools already accredited who received there accreditation on full vs part time staff, will these standards be re-evaulated? It seems qualitative rather than quanititative, so the debate is just starting!
This is exactly what I had heard from the Dean at NSU business school in December. The question will come in the implementation. Schools like Touro and NSU may be able to achieve AACSB - but no one knows for sure exactly how much "participation" will be required out of faculty. Regards - Andy