AACSB Data and Research Blog

Preliminary Results From the 2017–18 Business School Questionnaire

By Jeanine Romano

Data collection for the 2017–18 AASCB Business School Questionnaire (BSQ) and BSQ Finances Module officially closed in early June. We have had record participation this year, with 972 of our member schools submitting a BSQ and 587 submitting a BSQ Finances Module

Since our June closing date, AACSB’s Business Education Intelligence (BEI) team has been reviewing each survey to help ensure that schools are submitting valid, reliable, and complete data. Data integrity is our top priority, so even though we do have validation processing rules programmed into the survey submission system, we also read through each submitted survey and assist schools when necessary. This may seem like a rather arduous process to some but it will lead to a data set that our members can be confident is as accurate as possible and truly germane to their benchmarking and peer analysis.

So far we have validated and accepted 426 BSQs and anticipate releasing the rest of the data by the end of September. As a benefit of participating, all member schools that submitted the surveys will have access to the custom report tools available in DataDirect

Here’s what can we tell you based on data from the 426 surveys we have accepted so far:

• A little less than half of these schools reported that their undergraduate students are mostly residential, whereas almost two-thirds of all graduate students are commuters.
• Close to 60 percent of the schools reported that they have updated their strategic plans within the last 18 months.
• Almost half of respondents indicated that teaching was their sole highest priority, whereas about 12 percent indicated that intellectual contribution was their sole highest priority.
• The median operating budget for these schools was over 11 million USD, but the average was a little less than 22 million USD.
• About 75 percent of these schools indicated that they offered at least one bachelor’s degree in accounting. A little less than this percentage also reported that they offered a specialized master’s degree in accounting.
• This year we introduced data analytics into our field/discipline category. Less than 2 percent of reporting schools indicated that they offered a bachelor’s degree in this area of study, and about 8 percent indicated that they offered a specialized master’s degree in the discipline.
• Only 20 percent of all doctoral degrees were in the field of accounting, but 40 percent were in the field of management.
• Nearly 82 percent of schools indicated that they offered at least one MBA program.
• Almost twice as many students on average at these schools are enrolled in part-time programs than in full-time programs.

But these are just preliminary results of only 426 schools. When we have finished reviewing and accepting all of our schools’ surveys, will we see something different? What about undergraduate enrollments, faculty, staff, and admissions? What are the differences in these figures based on location, mission, size, and other factors? And how are schools’ program portfolios, enrollments, staffing structures, and financial situations changing

In the coming months you will see some blog posts on the complete set of data, where we’ll be diving into questions such as: What is the state of data analytics as program of study? Where are the trends in online MBA? How do salary versus non-salary expenditures vary depending on what a school emphasizes? Are the percentages of women in faculty roles increasing?—to name just a few

AACSB strives to be widely recognized as the primary source for data and analysis on business education globally. We look forward to receiving the submissions for all schools and being able to provide our members with an even more accurate picture of the current state of business schools.

BSQ Survey Data Validation: Why We Do It and Why You Should Care

By Jeanine Romano

A few months ago, AACSB released its 2017–18 iteration of the Business School Questionnaire (BSQ) to all of our educational members, and last week was the official final deadline for submission. Currently, over 760 schools have submitted their responses to the BSQ, and we are working with more than 250 additional schools to complete their surveys in time to be included in our annual data reports.

While AACSB’s DataDirect system has been around since 2004, we have been collecting data about business schools since 1968, when we launched the Salary Survey for the first time. In 2001, we added the survey that became the BSQ once the DataDirect system was in place. Within the past 10 years, our suite of annual surveys has grown to include several spinoff BSQ modules on topics for which many schools desire more detailed information. These include the Finances Module, the Employment Modules, and the Expanded Data Module, as well as surveys on collaborations and Innovations That Inspire. As a result, DataDirect has become the most comprehensive database on business schools in the world!

None of this growth would have been possible without the help of AACSB’s members and their commitment to submitting valid and reliable information to our surveys, and we want to thank all of our members for their time and their ongoing support of the global business education community.

Now that the data have been submitted, it’s time for AACSB’s Business Education Intelligence (BEI) team to review each survey to make sure that the data are valid, reliable, and, most of all, complete. While we do have validation processing rules programmed within the survey submission system, we also read through each submitted survey to be sure that the qualitative information is appropriately entered, and to catch subtle discrepancies that may be overlooked by our programmed validation.

We realize that our members’ time is valuable and that the BSQ is quite extensive. This year we have taken steps to minimize the number of validation issues our members might encounter by providing more BSQ tutorial webinars (available in the DataDirect Users Group on the AACSB Exchange) and a BSQ Common Validation Guide (available in DataDirect under Downloads ⇒ DataDirect Tutorials and Guides ⇒ BSQ Common Validation Issues. 

In addition, we have changed the way we communicate our concerns regarding your survey submission by including validation comment boxes in each section of the survey. This way, the information you need regarding your survey validation is available within the survey itself when you go back to make corrections.

By having a data validation comment box for each section of the survey, we can more clearly communicate any concerns regarding your survey.

Many of our members may receive an email from a BEI team member asking to clarify or correct certain items in the survey. If your school receives such an email, please take the time to review our feedback in the data validation comment boxes. Because of this extra step we take to ensure accuracy, our members can feel confident that any data from our platform are valid and reliable when used for benchmarking and research. We want to be sure that our members’ experience with the DataDirect survey submission process is a positive one, and we will work to make even more improvements in the future.

Please feel free to contact us with any suggestions or questions you may have at [email protected].

Trends in Employment of Business School Graduates (Part II): Industry of Employment for Full-time MBAs

By Colin Nelson

For the past few years, AACSB has collaborated with the MBA Career Services Employer Alliance (MBA CSEA) to deliver their annual survey of MBA graduate data as part of AACSB’s BSQ Employment Module. While the AACSB data entry sections of the survey gather basic employment data for graduates of degree programs at all levels, the MBA CSEA sections (which conform to their standards for full-time MBA programs) take a deeper dive into the specific employment outcomes of full-time MBA program graduates.

Figure 1. Full-time MBA Graduates by Industry of Employment, Numbers and Weighted Average Starting Salaries

Note: Data come from 89 AACSB-accredited business schools that completed the MBA CSEA data entry sections of the BSQ Employment Module in all three years.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of graduates gravitate to the industries with the highest average salaries in each year, although it is interesting to see the direction of some of the trend lines in the tab labeled “FT MBA Graduates Accepting Position.” For example, the numbers of MBA graduates reporting that they accepted a position in the consulting and financial services industries (the two highest-paying of all industries on the list, on average) have dropped 5 to 6 percent over the past three years. This is in spite of the fact that the average starting salary reported in both industries increased by a similar percentage over that same period.

In contrast, the numbers of MBA graduates reporting that they accepted a position in the technology sector increased nearly 17 percent, despite the fact that the average reported starting salary only increased by 2.5 percent over the last three years. A particularly surprising finding was the overall increase in average reported starting salary for graduates going into either government or transportation and logistics services. These were the highest two increases of all industries on the list, although it is likely that the small number of such graduates may be skewing the averages somewhat.

Employment Trends of Business School Graduates (Part I): Post-Graduation Employment Rates

By Colin Nelson

Among the most important objectives that business schools ultimately have is to ensure that their students prepared for the careers they will pursue post-graduation. One aspect of the data AACSB International collects from schools that participate in the Employment Module of our annual Business School Questionnaire (BSQ) measures how successful their graduates are in obtaining employment after earning their degrees.

Figure 1. Business Graduates Reporting Job Offer Acceptance

Note: Data come from 137 AACSB member schools that completed the AACSB data entry sections of the BSQ Employment Module in the last three years.

Of particular interest is the difference between the trends in employment rates and the numbers of graduates at each level. For example, among this set of participating schools, there was a decline in the overall number of graduates over the past three years for both general business master’s and doctoral programs, of approximately 8 percent and 14 percent, respectively. In both cases, the proportion of total graduates attaining employment within three months of graduation rose by a couple of percentage points.

In contrast, both undergraduate and specialized master’s programs saw a rise in their overall number of graduates by approximately 21 percent, while the employment rate held steady for undergraduate degree earners and declined by nearly 7 percent for specialized master’s graduates. This discrepancy may indicate that the job market is able to absorb an increased number of business degree graduates at the undergraduate level. To a lesser extent, this is also true at the specialized master’s level, given that the decline in employment rate for these graduates is far less than the increase in their numbers.

Look out for the second part of this series, in which we discuss trends in the industries in which MBA graduates find employment!

Factors Affecting School Size Categories (Part II)—Or, What Makes A School Large, Small, or Somewhere in Between?

By Colin Nelson

As promised in my last post, we have continued exploring potential alternate parameters for categorizing schools according to size. This post explores the impact on the number of schools classified as small, medium and large—if the parameters are changed from the standard parameters based on counts of full-time faculty to the various alternate parameters mentioned in Part I. We look at that impact at subsets of AACSB member schools offering different combinations of degree levels.

Figure 1. Net Change in Size Categories, Standard vs. Alternate Parameters by Degree Program Levels Offered

 

Some of the considered alternative size parameters cause the numbers of small, medium and large schools to differ more significantly from our standard classification scheme than others do. For example, when using the alternate parameters of Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) Faculty Counts or Total Enrollment Counts, in each case the vast majority of schools stay in the same size category as when defined by the current standard Full-Time (FT) Faculty parameters. Schools that do change category almost inevitably move down the size scale, particularly schools that offer both undergraduate- and graduate-level programs. Only among schools that solely offer undergraduate programs does the change in size category potentially go in either direction.

By contrast, when we apply alternate parameters based on student/faculty ratios, the numbers of schools that change size category from the standard parameters are far greater, comprising anywhere between 20 to 40 percent of the schools in each group. The net changes for both types of student/faculty ratios follow the same general pattern, but that pattern is much less uniform than that of the alternate parameters of FTE Faculty and for Total Enrollment.

Schools with doctoral programs, for example, appear much more likely to move down in size category when using either Student/FT Faculty or Student/FTE Faculty Ratios. In particular, application of the Student/FT Faculty Ratio results in over 34 percent of schools that offer doctoral programs moving down in size category, whereas nearly 19 percent of all schools without doctoral programs move up in size category.

When selecting peer schools for benchmarking in DataDirect based on school size, it is important to keep factors such as these in mind. What other characteristics do you think might influence the size category under these alternate parameters?

Factors Affecting School Size Categories (Part I)

By Colin Nelson

Historically, AACSB International has classified business school size categories by the number of full-time (FT) faculty reported on the annual Business School Questionnaire (BSQ), according to the following parameters: small (35 or fewer), medium (36-74), and large (75 or more). Since the recent release of the BSQ data from the 2016–17 iteration of the survey, however, we decided to explore some other potential parameters for size categorization, to see whether any significant differences would result. For the purpose of this experiment, we chose total overall enrollment, the numbers of full-time equivalent (FTE) faculty (the sum of the headcount of FT faculty and the reported FTE of part-time faculty), and student/faculty ratios for both FT and FTE faculty totals as new, alternate parameters.

Figure 1. Comparison of Size Categories, Standard vs. Alternate Parameters

As the data show, of these different ways that business schools can be categorized by size, some cause the categorization to differ more significantly than others from our standard classification scheme. For example, the alternate parameters for FTE faculty and for total enrollment each retain the majority of schools in each size category from the standard FT faculty parameters. By contrast, the differences from the standard parameters in the number of schools that fall into each size category for the alternate parameters for student/faculty ratios are far greater.

Notably, institutional control type also appears to have a significant effect on the proportion of schools that change size categories, regardless of which alternative parameters are used:

Table 1. Percent of Schools Remaining in Original Size Categories, by Control Type and Alternate Parameters

Source: AACSB 2016–17 Business School Questionnaire (BSQ).

The figures in Table 1 indicate the proportion of schools in each set that did not change size category when alternate parameters were applied. Further, any change in size category can be in either direction. Depending on the alternate parameters used, there were some schools that shifted from large to small, and vice versa, and others that moved only one step up or down.

The numbers clearly indicate that the effect of alternate parameters is greater when applied to private institutions than when applied to public institutions, in that public institutions are less likely than private ones to change size category when alternate parameters are applied, regardless of which alternate parameter was used. Being cognizant of such variabilities can be useful for school administrators, particularly when selecting peer schools for benchmarking in DataDirect.

Look out for Part II of this series, which will delve into the effects of the alternate parameters in conjunction with the types of degrees offered by institutions.

Business School Activity Priorities and Faculty Gender Balance

By Colin Nelson

As promised in my last post, today I explore associations between the business school activity priorities reported on the annual Business School Questionnaire (BSQ) by AACSB member schools, and their reported faculty gender balance. As a reminder, the activity priority codes reported on the BSQ reflect one dimension of diversity in business school missions by identifying the rank-order prioritization of intellectual contributions, teaching, and service. There seems to be a small but clear progression in average gender balance based on whether schools reported emphasizing intellectual contributions (ICs) over teaching, or vice versa:

Table 1. Female Percentage of Total Full-time Equivalent (FTE) Faculty, by General Activity Priorities

Source: AACSB BSQ, 2015–16. Data come from all AACSB member schools that reported faculty data with gender breakouts.

I’ve grouped the general activity codes by the activity types that they each emphasize most highly in Table 1 above. Codes BPA-2 and BPA-4 both indicate that the sole high-priority activity of the school is ICs. However, the codes differ in that BPA-2 places medium emphasis on teaching and low emphasis on service, while BPA-4 holds the reverse emphases. Codes BPA-1, BPA-3, and BPA-6 indicate the same for teaching, differing in that BPA-1 places medium emphasis on ICs and low emphasis on service, while BPA-3 is the reverse, and BPA-6 holds both ICs and service as medium emphasis. BPA-5 and BPA-7 indicate both teaching and ICs are equally highly emphasized, but BPA-5 holds service as low emphasis, and BPA-7 holds it equally high with teaching and ICs.

The data show that both the mean and median percentage of female faculty are largest among schools that regard teaching as their sole high priority activity and lowest among schools that hold ICs as their sole high priority activity, while schools that emphasize both teaching and ICs equally highly constitute an intermediate position. This progression became even more obvious when the 760 schools were divided into four quartiles by their female percentage of FTE faculty:

Figure 1. General Activity Priority Groups, by Female Percentage of Total Full-time Equivalent (FTE) Faculty

Source: AACSB BSQ, 2015-16. Data come from all AACSB member schools that reported faculty data with gender breakouts.

What these data suggest is that schools with a greater focus on teaching are more likely to have a higher proportion of female faculty than those with a greater focus on producing ICs. If that is indeed the case, then my next question is this: Are schools with a greater focus on teaching more likely to have a higher proportion of female faculty because women are more likely to seek faculty positions at such schools? Or, are schools with a greater focus on teaching more likely to have a higher proportion of female faculty because they tend to hire more women than those with a greater focus on producing ICs?

Business School Priorities: A Comparative Analysis

By Colin Nelson

In the annual Business School Questionnaire (BSQ) that goes out to all member schools of AACSB International (The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business), we ask for data on each business school's priorities when it comes to different types of mission-based activity. These data points are unique to AACSB, and help us to connect our members to their peer schools, who report similar emphases.

Our data show how business schools prioritize two primary types of activity: general school activities such as teaching, research, and service (coded as BPA-1 through BPA-7 in the visualization below); and types of research activity, including contributions to practice, discipline-based scholarship, and learning & pedagogical research (coded as BPB-1 through BPB-13). Each school that completes the BSQ is asked to identify how they prioritize these activity types from among a number of possible combinations, as shown below:

Figure 1. Prioritization of Business School Activities

Source: AACSB BSQ. Note: These figures do not represent a controlled set of schools across all years. All BSQ participants in each academic year are included. Please scroll down for the "full-screen" button to see the whole display.

Interestingly, activity priority codes that hold teaching as either the highest, or one of the highest, priority activities were consistently chosen 88 percent of the time by the whole population of reporting schools. Even when one limits the sample to AACSB-accredited schools, the ratio only drops by one percentage point. By contrast, activity priority codes that place the highest priority on intellectual contributions (singularly or jointly) were only chosen between 52-55 percent of the time by the whole population of reporting schools, or between 55-57 percent by accredited schools.

BPA-1 and BPA-5 are consistently the most frequently chosen activity priority codes, together accounting for over two thirds of all reporting schools in each year. However, it is interesting to note that BPA-5 (which gives equally high priority to teaching and intellectual contributions) overtakes BPA-1 (which places teaching alone as the highest priority) as the most popular choice after the 2012-13 BSQ, particularly among AACSB-accredited schools. It will be worth watching to see whether the emphasis on intellectual contributions catches up to that placed on teaching in years to come.

Similarly, discipline-based scholarship, which we define as “the creation of new knowledge”, is consistently given the highest research priority (singularly or jointly) by approximately 70 percent of all reporting schools each year. Indeed, BPB-1 (which gives higher priority to discipline-based scholarship, medium to contributions to practice, and lower to learning & pedagogical research) is consistently the most popular choice amongst the research priority codes across all years, garnering over a quarter of all reporting schools in each year, whether one controls for accreditation status or not.

By contrast, learning & pedagogical research, which we define as “the enhancement of the educational value of instructional efforts of the institution or discipline”, ekes out only slightly more than a quarter of all reporting schools giving it highest research priority each year, while contributions to practice occupies a middle ground between the two in terms of emphasis.

Please look out for my next post, in which I plan to explore connections between the activity and research priorities and the gender balance of full-time faculty!

MBA Graduates’ Starting Salaries by Professional Function (Part II)

By Colin Nelson

As promised in my last post, here is a preview of the 2016–17 data from the BSQ Employment Module’s MBA CSEA sections:

Table 1. MBA Graduates’ Starting Salaries by Professional Function

Professional Function	N of Schools Reporting	N of Graduates Reporting	Weighted Average Salary (USD)
Consulting	75	2,001	$123,720
Finance/Accounting	90	1,934	$114,064
General Management	62	740	$107,396
Marketing/Sales	82	1,366	$102,844
Information Technology	25	112	$97,699
Other	59	416	$97,270
Operations/Logistics	70	558	$95,915
Human Resources	12	38	$83,952

Source: 2016–17 BSQ Employment Module—MBA CSEA Sections. Notes: All salary data represent weighted averages, based on the number of MBA graduates reporting salaries in each category.

As compared to the same data from the previous year’s survey, the number of schools reporting graduates in each function rose across the board, likely due to the fact that nearly 22 percent more schools completed the MBA CSEA sections of the survey in 2016–17 than in the previous year. However, the breakdown of professional functions has a very different configuration in terms of average salaries and numbers of graduates.

Table 2. Percentage Change From 2015–16 to 2016–17

Professional Function	N of Schools Reporting	N of Graduates Reporting	Weighted Average Salary (USD)
Information Technology	8.7%	16.7%	6.2%
Marketing/Sales	10.8%	12.2%	2.4%
Finance/Accounting	23.3%	3.0%	1.2%
Consulting	5.6%	-1.5%	1.1%
General Management	12.7%	5.6%	0.1%
Operations/Logistics	32.1%	18.5%	-1.2%
Other	18.0%	-14.9%	-3.7%
Human Resources	20.0%	31.0%	-12.0%

Source: BSQ Employment Module—MBA CSEA Sections.

As you can see, the least significant changes over last year in the average salaries and numbers of graduates reporting accepting positions occurred in the top three professional functions by average salary (Consulting, Finance/Accounting, and General Management). The most significant changes generally occurred within the fields with the fewest graduates reporting accepted positions. IT, for example, has seen a significant boost in both areas over last year, while the average HR starting salary saw an even more precipitous decline. Of course, it makes sense that the functions with the fewest graduates reporting accepted positions would have more significant changes, due simply to the smaller sample size, but it makes me wonder whether that is the only factor, or whether it is also reflective of general industry trends.

The data from the 2016–17 BSQ Employment Module’s MBA CSEA sections is now available to participating schools within our DataDirect system.

MBA Graduates’ Starting Salaries by Professional Function (Part I)

By Colin Nelson

For the past three years, AACSB has collaborated with the MBA Career Services Employer Alliance (MBA CSEA) to deliver their annual survey of MBA graduate data in conjunction with the Employment Module of AACSB’s Business School Questionnaire (BSQ). Among the many data points gathered by this survey are data on the starting salaries of MBA graduates by a number of factors, including the industry in which they receive employment, the geographic location of their employment, their level of pre-MBA program work experience, and more. Table 1 shows a sample of these data, broken out by the professional function in which they serve:

Table 1. MBA Graduates’ Starting Salaries by Professional Function

Professional Function	N of Schools Reporting	N of Graduates Reporting	Weighted Average Salary (USD)
Consulting	71	2,032	$122,433
Finance/Accounting	73	1,878	$112,695
General Management	55	701	$107,292
Other	50	489	$101,041
Marketing/Sales	74	1,218	$100,433
Operations/Logistics	53	471	$97,119
Human Resources	10	29	$95,453
Information Technology	23	96	$91,957

Source: 2015–16 BSQ Employment Module—MBA CSEA Sections. Notes: All salary data represent weighted averages, based on the number of MBA graduates reporting salaries in each category.

As one might expect, the professional functions with the largest average starting salaries are also the most popular, judging by the number of MBA graduates reporting employment. Interestingly, though, that pattern is interrupted, mainly due to the popularity of the Marketing/Sales category.

Look out for my next post, in which I will compare the same data from the 2016–17 iteration of the survey, prior to its upcoming release!