AACSB Data and Research Blog

How Prepared Are Business School Deans?

By Elliot Davis

Student perception of how effectively business schools have prepared them for a successful career has always been an important factor when determining the impact and quality of any business school. But what about the perceptions of the leaders of these business schools? How do they perceive their own preparation for leadership?

The AACSB Deans Survey is conducted triennially in order to better understand trends and profiles of business school deans’ offices around the world.  On AACSB’s recent 2017-18 Deans Survey, business school deans were asked how prepared they were for their deanship upon entering into the role. Deans used a four-point scale, with 1 = Not at all prepared, 2 = Somewhat unprepared, 3 = Somewhat prepared, and 4 = Highly prepared. *

Survey respondents include 585 deans from 64 countries and territories, 23 percent of whom are female and 51 percent of whom indicated that they had been in their role for at least three years.The following are some of the findings we gleaned regarding how prepared deans are for their role from the responses to our AACSB 2017–18 Dean’s Survey.

Activity Preparedness Ranking

Activity	Mean (4=Max)
Academic and programmatic development	3.51
Strategic planning	3.47
Faculty recruitment and retention	3.43
Engaging with the business community	3.33
Faculty development	3.32
Budget planning	3.29
Working with central administration	3.18
Student recruitment and retention	3.14
Communications (public relations, marketing, etc.)	3.13
Accreditation management	3.04
Fundraising	2.56

Approximately 93.3 percent of deans reported being highly prepared or somewhat prepared for academic and programmatic development, similar results were seen with strategic planning (93.7 percent) and faculty recruitment and retention (93.3 percent). At the other end of the spectrum, just 53 percent of deans reported being at least somewhat prepared to manage fundraising. 

Sixty-eight percent of deans admitted to being somewhat unprepared or not at all prepared to manage at least one of their activities.  

About the AACSB Deans Survey

Participation in the Deans Survey is optional and is limited to deans of AACSB member schools. If you’d like to learn more about the Deans Survey or its companion survey that runs concurrently with it, the Senior Business School Administrators Survey, visit aacsb.edu/data.

*Deans were also given the option to indicate that the activity was not applicable to their role.

Highlights From The 14-15 Senior B-School Administrators Survey

By Elliot Davis

In November, AACSB convened its annual Associate Deans Conference, which brings together a diverse group of business school representatives, from associate deans to faculty. At the conference, we rolled out some of our findings from the 2014–15 Senior Business School Administrators Survey (hereon referred to as the Administrators Survey), including a brief infographic.

The Administrators Survey, conducted triennially with the cooperation of AACSB’s Associate Deans Affinity Group, received participation from over 500 business school administrators with 50 countries represented. The respondents included associate deans, assistant deans, vice deans, and their equivalents serving in colleges or schools of business. Here are just a few highlights from the survey:

• Ninety percent of respondents indicated that they report directly to their dean. On average, respondents indicated having 13 direct reports of their own. An assistant dean from a school in the United States reported having the most faculty direct reports with 35. Another assistant dean from a school in the United States reported having the most staff direct reports with 27.

• Nearly half (42 percent) of the respondents indicated that they had no aspirations of becoming a dean. This lines up well with the results from our 2014–15 Deans Survey, which revealed that 32 percent of responding deans reported having been in an associate dean, assistant dean, or vice dean role prior to their first deanship. This grouping of senior administrators is somewhat newer to their current role, with 69 percent of respondents reporting that they are in their first appointment (with an average of 4.6 years in the role). Many of the administrators are tenured, however, with 83 percent reporting holding tenure (among those in institutions/countries where tenure exists).

• In February, I wrote about the B-School Dean Lingua Franca, which somewhat unsurprisingly was found to be English, with a whopping 90 percent of respondents to the Deans Survey reporting English fluency. The post includes a useful table that details the commonality of English fluency of deans by region, and which helps underline the universal nature of the language among the position. The Administrators Survey unveiled a similar occurrence, with 92 percent of respondents reporting English fluency and an additional 6 percent reporting conversational English proficiency.

• Further, among the Administrators Survey respondents, 33 percent reported speaking two or more languages fluently. Seven percent reported speaking three or more languages fluently. Again, this aligns closely with the findings from the Deans Survey, in which 35 percent of respondents reported speaking two or more languages fluently, and 10 percent reported speaking three or more languages fluently. With respect to languages conversationally spoken, French was the most commonly indicated (15 percent), followed by German and English (both at 6.48 percent).

I will be sharing more data and findings from the Administrators Survey in the coming months. If you are interested in the results of the survey and would like to suggest a focus for a future blog post or to just to chat about b-school administrators, please leave a comment below or send me a message at [email protected].

Decision-Making at Business Schools, Part II: Involvement and Influence of Stakeholder Groups

By Colin Nelson

As promised in my last post, part II of this series will explore some of the 2014–15 BSQ Finances Module data that have to do with how decision-making is handled by AACSB members across the world, with regard to determining operating budgets and allocating resources. In the BSQ Finances Module survey, we include nine to 12 stakeholder groups (depending on whether the school is independent or attached to a parent university), and ask respondents to indicate their relative levels of involvement in, and/or influence over, the budgeting and allocation processes. The results for the 380 AACSB members whose surveys were locked at the time of this writing were interesting, to say the least:

Table 1. Stakeholder Involvement in Business School Budgeting Decisions

Note: Respondents were asked to rate only those stakeholder groups that were applicable to their school, hence the varying Ns. The groups marked with an asterisk (*) do not apply to the 15 schools self-identifying as “Type C,” or stand-alone business schools unaffiliated with a parent university/institution.

Table 2. Stakeholder Influence on Business School Budgeting Decisions

Note: Respondents were asked to rate only those stakeholder groups that were applicable to their school, hence the varying Ns. The groups marked with an asterisk (*) do not apply to the 15 schools self-identifying as “Type C,” or stand-alone business schools unaffiliated with a parent university/institution.

I should note here that respondents are not precluded from indicating that multiple stakeholders have the same levels of involvement and influence, as some governance models are more flexible and/or egalitarian than others. Unsurprisingly, business school deans were by far the most likely group to have high levels of involvement in and influence on the resource allocation process (i.e., to be rated at level 4 or 5). However, a strong majority of the respondents that were affiliated with a parent university indicated that their university provost also had such levels of involvement and influence, and at least for influence, the university finance office did as well.

While the data within each table are interesting in and of themselves, what I found particularly striking were the instances in which certain stakeholder groups were reported to have significantly different levels of influence over the budgeting and resource allocation processes than actual involvement in them. This was particularly true of provosts, 56 percent of whom were rated at level 4 or 5 for involvement, while 70 percent were rated at 4 or 5 for influence. Accrediting bodies showed a similar situation, as only 11 percent of respondents gave them a rating of level 4 or 5 for involvement, but for influence, approximately 23 percent of respondents rated them at 4 or 5. Business school deans actually had a slightly lower proportion of the highest ratings for influence than they did for involvement.

Decision-Making at Business Schools, Part I: Aspects of Governance

By Colin Nelson

As we approach the release of the 2014–15 BSQ Finances Module data, the time seemed ripe to explore some of the preliminary data that were reported by our participating schools this year regarding governance structures. In particular, I was interested to see how decision-making is handled for various aspects of business school governance by our AACSB members across the world.

Of the 350 member schools whose data were finalized at the time of this writing, 13 were autonomous, stand-alone (Type C) business schools, unattached to any larger parent university or institution. For the BSQ Finances Module, the remaining 337 schools that were affiliated with a larger university or institution were each asked to indicate whether they themselves, their parent university, or the two jointly make decisions regarding five essential aspects of governance.

Figure 1. Control of Governance Aspects, Type A Schools (n=319)

Note: Type A schools are those that identify as standard academic units, among others, at a parent institution from whom they derive their degree-granting authority.

Figure 2. Control of Governance Aspects, Type B Schools (n=18)

Note: Type B schools are those that identify as semi- or mostly autonomous academic units that nevertheless derive their degree-granting authority from a parent institution.

I was impressed to see the large proportions of schools that reported they had at least a shared level of control with their parent institution over most aspects of their school’s governance, if not outright control. Even among schools self-identifying as Type A, this was the case more often than not.

Clearly, the relationship type (A vs. B) does appear to make a difference in terms of the level of control a school has over each aspect. Indeed, we see what we would expect to see: schools that self-identify Type B reported higher levels of control over each governance aspect, on average, than their Type A counterparts. Still, I find it interesting that so many parent institutions seemingly allow for more substantial levels of control over these aspects of governance, particularly ones such as development and management of overhead expenses, which one might expect to fall more squarely under the aegis of a parent institution than, say, determining teaching loads.

Look out for my next post, in which I plan to delve more deeply into precisely which groups of stakeholders are involved in, or influence, the governance decisions of their business school!

The Uses of Operating Funds (Part III): Types of Non-Salary Uses

By Colin Nelson

In Part II of this series, I discussed various factors relating to the uses of business school operating funds for salary purposes. In this third part, I will talk about the non-salary expenditures by business schools. As a reminder, I have merged the numerous categories from the BSQ Finances Module 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 Non-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, for each size category, non-salary expenditures tend to be much more evenly distributed among the various usage categories than salary expenditures. In particular, Degree Program Instructional Activity accounts for strong majorities of salary expenditures at all size categories, yet it averages only a third of all non-salary expenditures by small schools, and only a quarter by medium-sized and larger schools, on average. Non-salary expenditures in this category include things such as audio-visual services, ancillary support, and course and curriculum development.

Several usage categories also display interesting differences by the size category of the reporting school. On average, Student Support (and to a lesser degree, External-Facing Activity) account for progressively larger percentages of non-salary expenditures as the school’s faculty size category increases, which is just as they do for salary expenditures. This is a clear indication that larger schools require more resources for the purposes of recruiting students and faculty, as well as maintaining good relations with alumni and other external stakeholders, which makes intuitive sense.

However, there are a couple of usage categories that demonstrate more counterintuitive results by size category, e.g., Infrastructure and Other Faculty and Admin Activity. While no clear progression exists as it does for other usage categories, I found it both interesting and surprising that in both cases, larger schools spent less on average than their medium-sized counterparts, and in the case of Other Faculty and Admin Activity, less than the set of smaller schools as well. Quite the opposite is true in the case of salary expenditures in these areas, so it may be that school size is correlated with differing balances of salary vs. non-salary expenditures for these types of uses.

 

Figure 2. Mean Percentages of Total Uses of Operating Funds for Non-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.

As with size categories, when looking at AACSB accreditation status, we can see that the average proportions of non-salary expenditure types are much more evenly distributed than salary expenditure types, but there are still some categorical commonalities. Just as with salary uses, Degree Program Instructional Activity claims the largest portion of non-salary expenditures for both accredited and non-accredited respondents (though just barely in the case of accredited schools). Also as with salary expenditures, this category shows the largest average difference in usage of funds between accredited and non-accredited schools, though in this case the difference is even larger. Non-accredited schools spend 14.5 percent more of their non-salary expenditures on this category than accredited schools do, on average.

Unlike for salary uses, accreditation status seems to make relatively little difference to average non-salary expenditures in other defined usage categories. Although accredited schools still devote higher percentages of their resources to almost every category besides Degree Program Instructional Activity, none of the usage categories differ by more than 2-3 percent, on average, aside from the non-defined “Other” category.

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!

 

---

[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.

Female Leadership’s Impact on New Doctorate Hires

By Hanna McLeod

A recent Poets & Quants article brought attention to a “historic gathering” of 10 female deans of leading business schools, which resulted in the articulation of a mission for increasing the number of women within the business school ecosystem, particularly at the student, faculty, and dean levels. One area that the article brings attention to is the “leaky pipeline” of female faculty, in addition to fewer promotions, support, and tenure achievements in comparison to their male counterparts.

In the past, I have explored the influence of female leadership on female student enrollment at business schools, but the article linked to above made me wonder whether schools led by female deans hire more female than male new doctorate faculty. I used our most recent Deans Survey to identify a list of female deans at AACSB-accredited schools who also provided data in the 2014-15 Salary Survey, in order to compare respective schools’ new hire data for new doctorates. Below is what I found:

The data might not be as compelling as what some of us would expect to see; however, the proportion of female new doctorate hires is slightly higher among female-led schools in comparison to male-led schools, according to these data. I decided to plunge a bit deeper into the data: although the number of male new doctorate hires is 21 percent greater than female new doctorate hires within this set of schools, is the proportion of female to male new doctorate hires greater at female-led schools?

The data show that regardless of whether a school has a male or female dean, a greater proportion of schools hire more male new doctorates than female new doctorates. Nonetheless, a significantly larger proportion of female-led schools reported female new doctorate hires outnumbering their male counterparts, at 39.1 percent compared to 32.8 percent of male-led schools. Further, if we combine the data of schools reporting more female new doctorate hires together with those reporting equal representation, 52.1 percent of female-led schools reported doing so, compared to 50.7 percent of male-led schools. Again, we don’t see a very pronounced difference; but my colleague Colin shared the observation that perhaps it is a positive indicator that gender bias is not a significant factor in hiring the most qualified candidates, regardless of whether the dean is male or female. It’s worth further noting that although final hiring decisions are often made by the dean, the recommended finalists usually come from a committee composed of faculty and then passes through to a department chair.

AACSB Senior Vice President, Accreditation and Member Services, Christine Clements, who served as dean for 12 years at the College of Business and Economics and University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, prior to joining AACSB, shared some helpful insights regarding gender in hiring decisions. She shared with me that in many schools the level of talent of the candidate – regardless of gender, race, and ethnicity – serves as the critical factor for hiring. She adds, “the bigger issue for female faculty often is department cultures and how they are supported once they arrive.”

As the 2014-15 Deans Survey shows, nearly 20 percent of deans at AACSB member schools are female – a jump from 18 percent in 2011-12 survey results. As female representation in business school leadership continues to rise, perhaps we will be more likely to see similar impact across the business school ecosystem reflecting what that recent gathering of 10 female deans envisioned for the future of women in business schools.

A B-School Dean Lingua Franca?

By Elliot Davis

In 2011, my colleague Juliane Iannarelli shared that in years past, the language of instruction at many business schools may have been taken for granted, but that in today’s global higher education and business environment, it has become a strategic dimension of program design and delivery.

In AACSB’s 2013-2014 Business School Questionnaire, 85.6 percent of 750 participating schools reported that the primary language of instruction at their institution was English. When excluding several English-speaking countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada, that percentage drops considerably to 37.8 percent. However, 57.9 percent of these schools do offer instruction in a secondary language, and in 81 percent of the schools offering a second language, English is the language spoken.

It is clear that English is spoken widely at business schools around the world. If not used as the primary language for instruction, it is often spoken as a secondary language. But what of the leaders of these business schools? What languages do they speak, and do their languages align closely with the primary language of instruction at the business schools themselves?

The results of AACSB’s 2014-2015 Deans Survey are in, and AACSB staff have been taking a closer look at the overall profile of the business school dean in recent weeks. The 2014-2015 Deans Survey, conducted triennially with the cooperation and assistance of AACSB member institutions and their staff, received participation from 650 business school deans and interim deans, with 64 nationalities represented.

As could be expected based on the overall profile of the business schools themselves, the most common fluently spoken language of the responding deans was English, with 90.2 percent of deans reporting fluency. Interestingly, though, 48 percent of the responding deans did report speaking more than one language fluently.

Table 1. Number of Languages Spoken Fluently By Deans

Number of Languages	Percent (n=357)
One	52.4%
Two	35.3%
Three	10.4%
Four	1.4%
Five or more	0.6%

Source: AACSB 2014-2015 Deans Survey

The below visual shows a breakdown of the commonality of English fluency of business school deans.

Learn About Tableau

 

You can access the display on its own page for ease of viewing by clicking here.

As evidenced by the world region breakdown provided on the display, English is spoken frequently in all regions. This result aligns closely with the usage of English as a primary or secondary language of instruction for the business schools themselves. 

While English is certainly commonly spoken by business school deans, other languages that were identified as commonly spoken among the responding deans include French (8.7 percent), Spanish (7.7 percent), Hindi (5.3 percent), and Mandarin Chinese (5.0 percent).

If you found this data interesting and would like to learn more about business school deans or issues related to management education, you can follow along with BizEd’s special coverage of the AACSB 2015 Deans Conference currently unfolding in San Diego.

Do Female-Led B-Schools Render Higher Female Enrollment?

By Hanna Drozdowski

From the AACSB Data and Research Blog team, Happy International Women’s Day to all the women who take on the many roles—deans, faculty, administrators, students—at AACSB member schools and management education worldwide! In honor of this special day, the AACSB Data and Research Blog team thought a post showing some of AACSB’s gender data would be appropriate to share with our readers.

 
Increasing female representation, especially in leadership positions, at business schools has long been a challenge that many schools have been working hard to overcome.  In the past five years, we have seen some improvement in the female representation among dean (or equivalent) positions at AACSB business schools; however, there is still room for more! Salary Survey data in the table below shows a snapshot of female representation in the dean (or equivalent) position in 2012-2013 and five years prior, in 2007-2008. Although an increase from 17% female representation to 18.5% is not very large, we are still seeing some growth in the actual number of female deans serving at AACSB member schools.

 

*AACSB Salary Survey Data

AACSB’s 2006-2007 and 2011-2012 Deans Surveys showed similar changes with female representation growth, from 17% in 2006-2007 to 18% five years later.

A past article in The Wall Street Journal, “More B-Schools Choose Women as Deans” included mention of the following:

 “having women in leadership positions can make a mark on a school's student body, a crucial asset as institutions look to close the gender gap among that population as well…The presence of women deans, just like the presence of women executives in the corporate world, ‘helps [students] to see the kind of things they can do and where they can go,’ says Linda Livingstone, dean of Pepperdine University's Graziadio School of Business and Management.”

 

Linda Livingstone’s quotation in the article made me wonder if AACSB data shows that business schools led by female deans are more inclined to attracting female students. Take a look at the enrollment data below:

*2011-2012 BSQ Data

Based on these numbers, it doesn’t seem that female deanship makes a significant difference in female enrollment. But what we can infer is that female enrollment, especially at the MBA and EMBA levels, is still rather low; but appears closer to 50/50 at the Specialized Master’s level.

Encouraging females to pursue business education and leadership positions has been an important agenda item for many schools, as well as other various educational institutions and associations. More work needs to be done in this space, but I do predict that in the next five years our data will show more equal representations among females and males.

 

Broadening Our View of Assurance of Learning

By Dan LeClair

Nearly ten years have passed since AACSB formulated the Assurance of Learning section of its accreditation standards. Building on a long tradition of assessment and continuous improvement, the new standards required accredited business schools to demonstrate achievement of learning goals specified by program. By placing greater emphasis on outcomes, accreditation could be more flexible about how learning objectives are met and standards would, thus, be more globally applicable. The change was also a response to increasing demands for accountability. It was no longer enough to use indirect measures, such as surveys of graduates, and other broad indicators, assurance of learning standards expected direct evidence that program learning goals have actually been met by graduates.

Today, the Blue Ribbon Committee on Accreditation Quality is examining AACSB’s experience with assurance of learning. To assist, staff colleagues and I gathered insights from the assessment literature and accreditation volunteers, as well as from our efforts to maintain an online Assessment Resource Center, convene the assessment listserv which now resides in AACSB’s Exchange, create two assessment seminars, and build an annual conference that focuses entirely on the subject. Our research revealed three major opportunities to broaden our view of assurance of learning.

First, assurance of learning could be recast so that it fits more appropriately within a broader curricula management system. Like other accreditation standards, the benefits of assurance of learning are derived mostly from the process of determining and revising learning goals and measures, as well as designing related policies and procedures. However, feedback from experienced deans reveals these benefits are sometimes lost to schools that adopt “cookie-cutter” approaches already being used other schools. In addition, taking on a life of its own, assurance of learning often exists separately from the curriculum. As a consequence, learning goals often do not reflect the wide range of distinctive missions across business schools, and some even claim that learning goals are so generic they can be applied to any professional education.

In Committing to Quality: Guidelines for Assessment and Accountability in Higher Education the New Alliance for Student Learning and Accountability urges institutions to “set ambitious goals.” The Alliance provides several guidelines for doing so, including ensuring that outcomes reflect appropriate higher education goals. For business schools, that would mean engaging employers and other business stakeholders, as well as academic thought leaders, in developing learning goals. Two other guidelines from Committing to Quality also illustrate why a broader curricula management approach makes sense:

Institutional practices, such as program review, are in place to ensure that curricular and cocurricular goals are aligned with intended learning outcomes.

The institution and its major academic and cocurricular programs can identify places in the curriculum or cocurriculum where students encounter or are expected or required to achieve the stated outcomes.

The second opportunity is to encourage more holistic approaches to assessment. Perhaps unintentionally, AACSB accredited schools have been steered away from using indirect measures (e.g. surveys of stakeholders), which can provide valuable contextual information to inspire and support curriculum change. The opinions of recruiters, faculty, and students can help schools to interpret gaps in learning goal achievement and provide insights about how to close these gaps. Similarly, data and information about students, including their characteristics and values, can help schools to use the results of direct assessments to improve curricula.

Many schools responded to the call for direct assessments by putting resources into those projects at the expense of other tools that can provide valuable insights about student learning. A broader view might encourage a portfolio of “evidence” (rather than strictly quantitative “measures”), including direct assessments, survey results, qualitative information, course taking patterns, etc. Subtle changes in accreditation language could encourage schools to examine all of their evidence to determine how students learn, detect patterns, and identify the changes needed.

The third opportunity to broaden our view of assurance of learning is to embrace national requirements for accountability, assessment, and program review as part of a broader assurance of learning framework. Knowledgeable accreditation volunteers have argued that AACSB standards have not been especially adaptable to different requirements internationally. Ironically, assurance of learning standards were originally adopted to enable globalization by focusing on outcomes rather than inputs, but did not fully consider how other national requirements could be substitutes, complements, or sources of conflict. Some require periodic in-depth and independent program reviews, while others require nothing at all. Some have national exams by field, others do not. Recognizing this diversity, schools could be encouraged to tailor their approach based on the national requirements; presenting existing evidence, filling the gaps, reducing duplication, and using resources more efficiently.

Since 2003 AACSB has been committed to assurance of learning, holding schools accountable for achieving their designated learning outcomes. This commitment has gained momentum within the higher education community, positioning AACSB as a leader in the area. Now, it is again a pivotal time in the evolution of assurance of learning: a time when it is important to broaden our view of its scope, purpose and implementation.