USF St. Petersburg campus Faculty Publications

AACSB accreditation: Symbol of excellence or march to mediocrity?

SelectedWorks Author Profiles:

Debra Sinclair

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2008

ISSN

1544-0389

Abstract

Accreditation by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) is supposed to be a symbol of excellence for business schools. However, the recent increase in the number of accredited schools and the creation of AACSB’s “professionally qualified” (PQ) designation for faculty raises some concern in the academic community. Why has the AACSB increased the number of accredited institutions by over 75% since 1996? What is the purpose of the PQ designation? Does accreditation by the AACSB promote quality in business education or has accreditation become just a marketing tool? This paper argues that the AACSB needs to reconsider its mission and divide accredited institutions into tiers or classes based on criteria such as the types of degrees granted, research productivity, and financial resources.

Comments

Citation only. Full-text article is available through licensed access provided by the publisher. Published in Journal of College Teaching & Learning, 5(5), 25-30. Members of the USF System may access the full-text of the article through the authenticated link provided.

Language

en_US

Publisher

Clute Institute for Academic Research

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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