Education

The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) implemented a revised set of accounting accreditation standards on July 1—the first major changes to the standards in nearly a decade.

The new standards, which cover everything from strategic management to learning and teaching, were approved at the AACSB’s annual business meeting in Chicago in April and are available at tinyurl.com/kke3tnj. The revisions reduced the number of accounting accreditation standards from 15 to 10 by eliminating duplicated and overlapping standards, according to Jerry Trapnell, special adviser to the president/CEO of the AACSB. Despite the reduction, Trapnell said the changes have made the accreditation process more vigorous.

Changes in the standards place focus in three areas:

• Innovation, such as creative curricula and new program concepts;
• Professional and academic engagement (including an emphasis on active learning); and
• Documenting the impact of educational initiatives and research outcomes to help promote accountability.

A total of 672 institutions around the world hold AACSB business school accreditation, and 178 of those also have accounting accreditation from the AACSB. Accreditation is a voluntary process that schools undertake to show that they hold themselves to a high set of standards.