As promised in my last post, today I discuss the categorization of supporting faculty along several dimensions. Please note that the schools included constitute the same set that I looked at in my last post, but 27 of those schools reported no supporting faculty at all, and have thus been removed from the number of schools in the tables below.
Table 1. Supporting Faculty by Accreditation Status of Reporting School
Source: 2014–15 Business School Questionnaire (BSQ)
In contrast to the participating faculty, those who are deemed supporting faculty are more likely to be classified as Instructional Practitioners (IP) than any other qualification category defined in Standard 15. Even more so than with Scholarly Academic (SA) participating faculty, the proportion of IP-qualified supporting faculty is significantly higher in the AACSB-accredited schools; however, in this case the difference is likely due to a similarly higher proportion of supporting faculty in the non-accredited schools that have not yet been classified. This makes sense, given that those schools that have not yet attained accreditation would be less likely to have made such classification a priority.
Table 2. Supporting Faculty by Continental Region
Source: 2014–15 Business School Questionnaire (BSQ)
Since 60 percent of the reported supporting faculty in this set are from schools in Northern America, it is clear that the overall worldwide figures are somewhat skewed in favor of Northern American proportions, but it is still interesting to look at the relative proportions across geographic regions. Unlike with SA-qualified participating faculty, only Africa and Northern America show clear majorities of supporting faculty classified as any of the four qualification categories. While it is true that supporting faculty from schools in the other regions are classified as IP more often than not (when classified at all), it is nevertheless clear that these schools are much more likely to employ SAs or Practice Academics (PAs) as supporting faculty, as well.
Table 3. Supporting Faculty by Program Levels Offered
Source: 2014–15 Business School Questionnaire (BSQ)
As with AACSB Accreditation, the program levels offered by reporting schools appear to make major and interesting differences in their proportional complement of supporting faculty qualifications. Again, supporting faculty are classified as IP more often than not, regardless of program levels offered, but only those schools that offer undergraduate programs and not doctoral programs show clear majorities of such faculty. Schools that offer doctoral programs, or that do not offer undergraduate programs, are significantly more likely to have SA and, to a lesser extent, PA supporting faculty, which makes sense given that they would need more scholarly support in order to focus on higher-level degree programs. Interestingly, schools that offer only undergraduate programs are apparently by far the most likely type of school to have PA supporting faculty.
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