AACSB Data and Research Blog

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!

Continued Growth in Accessibility of AACSB-Accredited Online Degrees

By Colin Nelson

I’ve received a number of requests recently for an update to a post I wrote back in January 2013, regarding the trend toward greater numbers of AACSB-accredited schools offering fully online degree programs at various levels. It looks like this trend has only continued in the intervening years:

Figure 1. Number of AACSB-Accredited Schools Reporting Fully Online Programs, by Level

Notes: This chart includes data from a controlled set of 521 accredited schools that responded to the AACSB Business School Questionnaire (BSQ) in all five years. Each school may have more than one fully online program at each level.

Five hundred and twenty-one AACSB-accredited schools, representing 36 countries and territories worldwide, participated in each of the last five annual BSQ surveys. Figure 1 above shows that the proportion of this set of schools that reported offering one or more of their degree programs, at any level, in a fully online delivery format has grown from 25 to 37 percent over the past five years.

While fully online programs at the Masters-Generalist (MBA) level saw the highest rise in absolute number of schools offering them, the percentage gains in the numbers of specialized master’s and especially bachelor’s degree programs offered fully online were significantly more robust (more than 67 and 80 percent increases, respectively, versus 44 percent for the general business master’s programs). In my earlier post, programs at the Masters-Generalist (MBA) level were the primary driver for the increase in schools with fully online programs at any level, so this new data may indicate a shift in focus, at least within this controlled set.

Online doctoral programs remain the notable exception to this trend. None of the schools in the controlled set reported offering a fully online doctoral program. In fact, as of this writing, only one AACSB-accredited school has ever reported a fully online doctoral program on the BSQ, namely the Management School of the University of Liverpool (not a member of the controlled set), which offers a fully online DBA program.

It is also worth noting that the growth in the number of AACSB-accredited schools offering such programs remains almost entirely driven by schools based in the U.S.:

Table 1. Schools Offering Fully Online Programs by Country/Territory

Notes: This table includes data from a controlled set of 521 accredited schools that responded to the AACSB Business School Questionnaire (BSQ) in all five years, and N equals the total number of schools from each country/territory in the set. There were three Chinese schools outside of Hong Kong in the controlled set, but none of them reported fully online programs. Each school may have more than one fully online program at each level.

Although American schools make up about 79 percent of the schools in the total controlled set, they consistently make up 94–95 percent of the schools reporting fully online programs at any level. So why are accredited schools in other countries not showing similar levels of growth in this increasingly popular delivery mode?

For one thing, although the BSQ does not collect data on blended/hybrid programs, we know anecdotally that programs providing some online or asynchronous content are growing in number. It may be that more schools outside the U.S. are opting for blended/hybrid programs versus fully online delivery. Another reason may be that, from the student perspective, the physical location of the school offering fully online programs does not matter as much as the quality of the programs themselves. Nevertheless, as fully online delivery continues to grow in popularity, it will be interesting to see if more schools from all over the world begin to pioneer new programs in cyberspace.

The Effect (Or Not) of Institutional Control on Starting Salaries

By Colin Nelson

By far one of the most popular queries we here at AACSB receive is regarding information about how a degree from an AACSB-accredited school contributes to the career of those who receive it. As we prepare to release the data from the 2015-16 iteration of the AACSB BSQ Employment Module survey, I thought I might treat our readers to a preview of the data that can help to shed light on that question.

For those who may be unfamiliar with the survey, on it we collect information about the starting salaries for graduates at every level. To frame the context of what we collect, it is important to understand that all starting salaries reported are only for those graduates who were seeking employment (i.e., not already employed during their course of study, continuing their education afterward, etc.). Moreover, they are only those that pertain to employment seekers who received and accepted job offers either at the time of graduation, or within three months. In this way, we can be sure that the salaries reported were received on the basis of the degree earned.

Figure 1. Average of Lowest and Highest Reported Base Starting Salary, by Institutional Control and Degree Level

Source: 2015-16 AACSB BSQ Employment Module. Note: All data are from AACSB-accredited schools, and N=number of schools reporting salary data.

I was surprised to note that, with a few exceptions, there was relatively little difference between the average starting salaries reported by public versus private schools, at both the high and low ends of the spectrum. It was mainly at the doctoral level that institutional control appeared to make any significant difference, and it is entirely probable that this is at least partially an effect of the small sample size of schools reporting at that level.

The only other place where there was any significant difference was at the high end of the starting salaries for graduates of generalist business master’s programs. Given how little real effect institutional control appears to have as a differentiating factor for starting salaries at other levels, however, I suspect that there are other factors at work. Look for my next post, in which I will explore some of them.

Faculty Qualifications Part II: Supporting Faculty

By Colin Nelson

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.

Faculty Qualifications Part I: Participating Faculty

By Colin Nelson

Now that the 2013 AACSB Accreditation Standards have been in place for a couple of years, a large majority of AACSB member schools are now comfortable classifying their faculty into the new qualification categories defined in Standard 15 (i.e., Scholarly Academic or SA, Scholarly Practitioners or SP, Instructional Practitioners or IP, and Practice Academics or PA). In fact, of the 770 total schools that participated in the 2014–15 Business School Questionnaire (BSQ), approximately 73 percent were able to report their faculty strength in those terms, broken out by participating versus supporting faculty. In this post, I discuss the categorization of participating faculty along several dimensions.

 

Table 1. Participating Faculty by Accreditation Status of Reporting School

Source: 2014–15 Business School Questionnaire (BSQ)

Unsurprisingly, given the proportional requirements of Standard 15 and the relative size of the set of accredited versus non-accredited respondents to the BSQ, the SA category forms the majority of participating faculty, though the proportion is certainly higher in the AACSB-accredited schools. What I find interesting here is that the same difference in proportion of such faculty at the non-accredited respondent schools, just over 6 percent, appears to be made up by their faculty whose qualifications include a mixture of academia and professional practice (i.e., either SP or PA).

 

Table 2. Participating Faculty by Continental Region

Source: 2014–15 Business School Questionnaire (BSQ)

Again, given the requirements of Standard 15, SA faculty are likely to form the majority of participating faculty regardless of where in the world the reporting school is located. However, it is interesting to see that there is still a high degree of variability across geographic regions in terms of how large a majority of SA faculty exists. In particular, schools in Latin America and the Caribbean, and to a slightly lesser extent in Europe, appear to be the most inclined to employ participating faculty of more diverse qualification categories. I should also note that the high proportion of SA faculty in Africa is likely due to the small number of respondents, and that all of those schools are either accredited or in the initial accreditation process.

 

Table 3. Participating Faculty by Program Levels Offered

Source: 2014–15 Business School Questionnaire (BSQ)

As with the other dimensions discussed above, variance in the types of degrees offered by reporting schools does not preclude the SA category’s prominence. What I find interesting here is that the schools that offer only graduate programs seem to be the most willing to hire participating faculty with more diverse qualification types. In particular, such schools show the largest proportion of SP or PA faculty, which may indicate both the necessity and freedom to include a greater emphasis on the practical knowledge at schools focused entirely on graduate-level studies.

Be on the lookout for the next post in this series, in which I will take a similar look at reported qualification types in supporting faculty!

Emerging Trends in MOOC Delivery of Business Education

By Colin Nelson

In past posts, I have touched on the subject of business school activity in the realm of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), which over the short period of time I looked at them previously had begun to grow rapidly. Today, however, there is a sea change in both the quantity and types of institutions offering MOOCs in the business education space, in the types of instructors teaching them, and, especially, in the types of courses being offered.

As in my previous posts, I examined many of the available MOOC providers that offer courses in the management education space, including Coursera, edX, Udacity, Futurelearn, the Canvas Network, and the Academic Financial Trading Platform (AFTP). Most of these providers have either maintained or grown their offerings since last I looked in on this topic[1]:

Figure 1. Business MOOCs by Platform and AACSB Accreditation Status of Provider Institutions, as of 6/30/2015

Note: The numbers on the graph bars indicate the actual absolute numbers of business-related MOOCs offered by the given provider type.

 

Figure 2. Institutions Offering Business MOOCs by Platform and AACSB Accreditation Status, as of 6/30/2015

Note: The numbers on the graph bars indicate the actual absolute numbers of provider institutions of the given type.

As you can see, the majority of MOOCs are still run by universities or other tertiary-level educational institutions, but a growing number of business-related MOOCs are being offered by institutions for whom academics are a less central focus. Evidence for this trend exists even at the most established MOOC platforms. For example, some of the business-related MOOCs available on the edX platform are delivered by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), or the International Monetary Fund (IMF), while Coursera hosts a MOOC delivered by economists from the World Bank Group.

Additionally, more and more of the business-related MOOCs I looked at are being taught by faculty from outside the business school, or by professionals such as accountants or economists, either in tandem with business school faculty or on their own. Both of the MOOCs offered on edX by Harvard Business School are co-taught with faculty from other departments, while on Coursera, only three out of 15 business-related MOOCs of the University of California, Irvine, are taught by a faculty member from the Merage School (the remainder are taught by UCI-Extension faculty).

Table 1. Proportion of Non-Business School Instructors of Business-Related MOOCs, by Platform, as of 6/30/2015

MOOC Platform	Total Number of Instructors Involved in Business MOOCs	Percentage from Outside Business Schools
Coursera	171	18.7%
edX	138	64.5%
Futurelearn	21	14.3%
AFTP	6	0.0%

Perhaps the most important development, however, is the increasing appearance of MOOC series that can be pursued for relatively low-cost credentialing options (at least when compared to the cost of a degree). EdX, for example, offers XSeries Certificates for completing a series of three to five related MOOCs, such as the Supply Chain Management XSeries of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Coursera likewise offers Specialization Certificates for completing short sequences of four to nine related MOOCs, usually including a capstone project, such as the Business Foundations Specialization of the Wharton School. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is now taking this evolution one step further, announcing the iMBA program, which will allow students to compile multiple Coursera Specialization Certificates into a full MBA degree, presumably at a fraction of the typical cost.

Finally, newer platforms have begun to expand various free or low-cost MOOC offerings available in the management education space, such as Silicon Valley’s NovoEd, India-based EduKart, France Université Numérique (FUN), and Chinese-language platforms ewant and xuetangX. Some business schools are experimenting with independent offerings as well. Stanford Graduate School of Business offers many individual business MOOCs and full certificate programs, other than the ones it runs through Coursera and NovoEd, on iTunesU and on its own proprietary platform (Stanford OpenEdX). Harvard Business School also runs its HBX program independently of the edX platform that Harvard University co-founded with MIT.

It seems clear that business education MOOCs are here to stay, but whether they will become a widely accepted part of higher educational credentialing remains to be seen.

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[1] Changes to the web format of the Canvas Network catalog of MOOCs since I last looked in on this topic have made it virtually impossible to determine who teaches the business-related courses offered via that platform or the total number of them; hence they are not considered further here. Udacity offers exactly one business-related MOOC in entrepreneurship, taught by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Blank (no academic affiliation).

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me a Match!

By Colin Nelson

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!

The Uses of Operating Funds (Part II): Types of Salary Uses

By Colin Nelson

In the annual BSQ Finances Module, as noted in my last post, we ask participating schools to break down their uses of operating funds into amounts used for salary versus non-salary purposes. Additionally, each of these types is further broken down by a large number of different categories, in order to understand how these funds are used by our members. In this second part of my series on the factors relating to the uses of business school operating funds, I will concentrate on the usage types for salary purposes, and I will cover non-salary uses by type in Part III.[i] Because we have many different usage categories, I have merged them as follows, for greater ease of display and analysis:

 

Uses of Funds Categories in BSQ Finances Module	Analysis Categories for Uses of Funds
Degree Program Instructional Activity	Degree Program Instructional Activity
Total Benefits Compensation Research Public Service Non-Degree Executive Education	Other Faculty and Admin Activity
Student Services and Admissions Scholarships	Student Support
Library Technology Auxiliary Enterprises Physical Plant	Infrastructure
Faculty/Staff Recruiting Expenditures Alumni Programs/Services Marketing/Advertising	External-Facing Activity
Other	Other

 

Figure 1. Mean Percentages of Total Uses of Operating Funds for Salary Purposes, by School Size and Usage Category

Note: These data come from the 218 AACSB members who entered data regarding their uses of operating funds by type on the 2013-14 BSQ Finances Module. Small schools have 35 or fewer full-time faculty, Medium schools have 36-74, and Large schools have 75 or more.

As you can see, no matter what the size category of the school, Degree Program Instructional Activity constitutes the majority of the average uses of operating funds. This is understandable, given that this category includes all faculty salary expenditures for teaching purposes (faculty salary expenditures for other purposes are included in the relevant categories, e.g., research, public service, executive education, etc.).

That said, size most definitely matters when it comes to the proportion of salary operating funds used, appearing as it does to be inversely correlated for Degree Program Instructional Activity, and directly correlated for every other usage category. This makes sense, given that smaller schools have less staff with time and resources to pursue activities other than instruction towards degree programs (which is arguably the most important activity type for business schools), but the size of the differences is impressive.

 

Figure 2. Mean Percentages of Total Uses of Operating Funds for Salary Purposes, by AACSB Accreditation and Usage Category

Note: These data come from the 218 AACSB members who entered data regarding their uses of operating funds by type on the 2013-14 BSQ Finances Module.

AACSB Accreditation is another factor that, somewhat unsurprisingly, corresponds to a greater spread of the average proportion of operating funds used for salary purposes across usage categories. The most noticeable difference is that, on average, the proportion of salary operating funds accredited schools devoted to Degree Program Instructional Activity was 8.5 percent less than their non-accredited counterparts, while they devote more to every other usage category.

AACSB accreditation standards emphasize the importance of research, public service, and other such impactful activities, with the philosophy that faculty engaging in these activities in turn provide better quality instruction. Given that fact, this difference is also understandable.

Be sure to join me next time to see what differences exist in the categorical proportions of non-salary expenditures!

 

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[i] I should note here that the way we collect salary expenditures on the BSQ Finances Module does not require respondents to categorize the salaries of individuals. Rather, they are asked to break down the total amount spent by the school on salaries into the various categories.

Our Reach

By Colin Nelson

The 2014 International Conference and Annual Meeting (ICAM) convened last month in Singapore, and represented AACSB International’s first foray into hosting our flagship annual conference in Asia. That ICAM was hosted there so successfully is significant, as it is a recognition of the changing dynamic within AACSB’s global membership; as of this writing, 51.5 percent of our membership is now based outside AACSB’s birthplace in the United States. In fact, it was around this time last year that AACSB’s non-U.S. members first crossed the majority threshold.

The breadth of AACSB’s global reach is often a topic of discussion, as is the organization’s penetration in various countries or regions. I recently created a tool on our new website, regularly updated, which hopefully should be of great use for those curious about AACSB’s global reach: 

http://www.aacsb.edu/about/our-reach/

This visualization now contains tabs that share data on both member and accredited member percentages in each country or territory in which AACSB currently has a presence, based upon our estimated number of total schools offering business degrees in each. (If you aren’t familiar with our visualization software, Tableau, by hovering your mouse over each country/territory, you can see a number of data points, including the number of member schools, accredited member schools, our current estimated total of schools offering business degree programs, etc.)

Also included is our official methodology for counting such schools, which I felt was important to include so that everyone can easily understand how we arrive at these estimations. The primary reason we use this particular methodology is that it allows us to quantify the breadth of the degree-based management education marketplace on a per country/territory basis, in a comparable and useful fashion. Using this methodology, for example, we are able to accurately declare that only about 4.4 percent of all institutions offering business degree programs worldwide currently hold AACSB accreditation. This cannot be said about the number of “business schools”, for the simple reason that there is no universally accepted definition of what precisely constitutes a “business school”, and thus no way to estimate that number.

As you can see, at this writing about 80 percent of our members, and 95 percent of AACSB-accredited schools, are located in countries that are currently classified as High-income economies by the World Bank. By contrast, we estimate that a far smaller percentage of all institutions offering business degrees worldwide are based in such countries:

Figure 1. Percentage of Estimated Schools Offering Business Degrees by World Bank Economic Category

AACSB’s push to expand our reach into previously untapped or underrepresented marketplaces is one of the most important of our nearly 100-year history. As AACSB reaches out to embrace management education and its providers in the developing world, I think we will end up being much more true to our mission.

Exec Ed Rise Continues

By Elliot Davis

In a April 2011 blog entry entitled "Exec Ed on the Rise", my colleague Juliane Iannarelli cited data from The International University Consortium for Executive Education (UNICON) that suggested that greater emphasis on non-degree granting executive education programs was underway. Two years later, UNICON has released findings from their most recent annual membership survey. The data collected both by UNICON, and through AACSB's own annual Business School Questionnaire (BSQ), provides an answer to the question Juliane proposed in her 2011 blog entry, "Are we seeing the beginning of a larger trend toward greater emphasis on non-degree, executive education?"

The Consortium, consisting of nearly 100 business schools worldwide, again provided several indicators for sustained growth. Of the survey respondents, 82 percent experienced growth in 2011-12, with 49 percent of schools reporting revenue growth of more than 10 percent. Additionally, 94 percent of executive education providers expect their revenue to grow in 2012-13.

The survey’s results suggest that the growth of executive education was stymied for a time due to the global economic downturn, but it is beginning to rebound with significant continued growth expected for the coming year. Driving this forecast is a resurgence of interest among employers in investing in talent development, and an acknowledgment that such investments are ultimately good for their companies’ bottom lines.

UNICON chair Melanie Weaver Barnett, the chief executive education officer at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, explains that “companies are beginning to invest in their people again, and our survey suggests that this investment might accelerate in the year ahead.”

AACSB's own data also confirms this assertion. Using a controlled set of 409 AACSB-accredited member schools completing the BSQ in all years from 2005 to 2013, the 2005-06 year saw 38.9 percent of AACSB-accredited schools supporting non-degree granting executive education center, institutes, or facilities. This percentage has grown to 44.1 percent for the 2012-13 year. While growth has not been constant from year to year, we are still observing a positive trend line.

Figure 1. Percent of AACSB-accredited schools supporting non-degree executive education center, institute, or facility, controlled for schools reporting in all years.

Source: AACSB International, Business School Questionnaire 

With the 2013 Accreditation Standards now in place, AACSB's commitment to the quality of executive education has never been more pronounced. Standard 14 refers exclusively to executive education, defined therein as educational activities that do not lead to a degree but have educational objectives at a level consistent with higher education in management. With this standard, all AACSB-accredited schools must ensure that their executive education programs have the appropriate processes in place to ensure high quality in meeting client expectations and continuous improvement in executive education programs.

The growth and accompanying changes within the realm of executive education should prompt those interested in pursuing it to review all pertinent factors. Emerging considerations such as level of customization, mode of delivery, and need for international perspective are all worthy of deliberation. 

Moving forward I expect business schools to continue innovating in executive education, creating novel partnerships with business, incorporating fresh insights from research, and leveraging technological advances to enhance learning and assessment. The economic downturn may have slowed the growth of these programs temporarily, but the recent gains indicate that accelerating growth is on the way.