In AACSB’s annual Collaborations Survey, we have collected a huge database of information on which of our member business schools are partnering with other institutions to enhance their programs and content delivery. My colleagues and I have discussed these partnerships in a number of previous posts here on this blog. There remains one aspect of our Collaborations Survey that we have not previously touched on, however.
A portion of the survey is devoted to “Desired Collaborations,” allowing schools to report on partnerships that they do not yet have, but would like to establish. In looking at the Desired Collaborations data, I found some interesting and (in some cases) significant differences in the types of desired collaborative activity reported by accredited versus non-accredited schools:
Table 1. Percentage of Desired Collaboration Activity Types, by AACSB Accreditation Status of Reporting School
|
Collaboration Activity Types |
Reporting School Is: |
Difference (Absolute Value) |
|
|
AACSB-Accredited |
Not AACSB-Accredited |
||
|
Joint Degree |
8.2% |
27.7% |
19.5% |
|
Faculty Activity |
46.1% |
63.3% |
17.2% |
|
Dual Degree (or Multiple Degree) |
24.4% |
41.2% |
16.8% |
|
Shared Resources |
6.7% |
19.8% |
13.1% |
|
Articulation/Twinning Agreement |
12.4% |
19.2% |
6.8% |
|
Study Abroad/Student Exchange |
79.1% |
83.6% |
4.5% |
|
Non-Degree/Executive Education |
13.3% |
16.4% |
3.1% |
|
Franchise Agreement |
0.4% |
2.3% |
1.9% |
|
Validation Agreement |
3.0% |
4.0% |
1.0% |
|
Other |
7.2% |
6.8% |
0.4% |
|
Total Number of Desired Collaborations Reported |
540 |
177 |
|
|
Total Reporting Schools |
143 |
65 |
|
Note: Desired collaborations reported with multiple types are counted for each applicable type, and so the percentages do not sum to 100 percent for each type of reporting school. Source: AACSB Collaborations Survey (2013-14).
As you can see, some activity types are definitely more desirable than others regardless of whether the reporting schools are accredited (e.g., Study Abroad/Student Exchange and Faculty Activity), but AACSB accreditation status makes a big difference in many cases as well. The most extreme example of this was in the desire for new Joint Degree programs, which were selected as a desired activity in over a quarter of all desired collaborations reported by non-accredited schools, while less than nine percent of the desired collaborations reported by accredited schools included this activity type.
In fact, in every activity category besides “Other”, non-accredited respondents were more likely to indicate that they wished to pursue new partnerships involving that activity type. This was true despite the fact that non-accredited respondents reported less than a quarter of the total desired collaborations entered into the survey. Clearly then, non-accredited schools were more likely than their accredited counterparts to select a larger number of activity types per desired collaboration. This implies that accredited respondents tend to be more targeted in the types of activities they wish to pursue in their future collaborations.
One possible explanation for this greater specificity is that AACSB-accredited schools have already established collaborative partnerships to a much greater extent. Indeed, non-accredited respondents reported a similar proportion of the total partnerships entered in the “Existing Collaborations” portion of the survey as they did of the “Desired Collaborations” portion.
The practical use of desired collaborations data to our membership is obvious. Anyone at an AACSB member school that has a DataDirect user account can log in to our DataDirect system and search out schools that have indicated a desire to partner with schools in their region, with schools interested in the same types of partnership activities, and sometimes even with them, specifically, if the school reporting the desired collaboration names specific desired partners (which was the case for 48.1 percent of all desired collaborations reported in the 2013-14 survey).
At our annual International Conference and Meeting (ICAM) for 2015, however, we announced a new way our membership can access and use these data to help find collaborative partners: the Collaboration Concourse, a new feature in the AACSB Exchange. Now, anyone attached to one of our member schools, whether they have a user account for DataDirect or not, can access the Collaboration Concourse on the Exchange, and search for schools that want to partner with schools like their own!
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