AACSB International (AACSB), a global nonprofit association, connects educators, students, and business to achieve a common goal: to create the next generation of great leaders.
Synonymous with the highest standards of excellence since 1916, AACSB provides quality assurance, business education intelligence, and learning and development services to over 1,700 member organizations and more than 840 accredited business schools worldwide.
When educational, professional, and business organizations become members of the AACSB Business Education Alliance, they are part of a movement united to improve the quality of business education around the world. AACSB connects, shares, and inspires innovation and quality throughout the member network, as well as the business community. The collective strength of the organization is founded on diverse perspectives, a global mindset, and a commitment to making a difference.
AACSB’s mission is to foster engagement, accelerate innovation, and amplify impact in business education. The global organization has offices located in Tampa, Florida, USA; Amsterdam, the Netherlands; and Singapore.
The mission of AACSB International is to foster engagement, accelerate innovation, and amplify impact in business education.
The vision of AACSB International is to transform business education for global prosperity.
The accreditation standards consist of three sections: (1) Strategic Management and Innovation, (2) Learner Success, and (3) Thought Leadership, Engagement, and Societal Impact. Each section contains standards that, when met, lead a school to make a positive individual impact. The combined impact across all AACSB-accredited schools moves AACSB toward achieving its vision of transforming business education for positive societal impact and its belief that business is a force for good in society.
(1) Strategic Management and Innovation
Standard 1：Strategic Planning
1.1 The school maintains a well-documented strategic plan, developed through a robust and collaborative planning process involving key stakeholder input, that informs the school on resource allocation priorities. The strategic plan should also articulate a clear and focused mission for the school.
1.2 The school regularly monitors its progress against its planned strategies and expected outcomes and communicates its progress to key stakeholders. As part of monitoring, the school conducts formal risk analysis and has plans to mitigate identified major risks.
1.3 As the school carries out its mission, it embraces innovation as a key element of continuous improvement.
1.4 The school demonstrates a commitment to positive societal impact as expressed in and supported by its focused mission and specifies how it intends to achieve this impact.
Standard 2：Physical, Virtual, and Financial Resources
The school manages its(2.1) physical, (2.2) virtual, and (2.3) financialresources to sustain the school on an ongoing basis and to promote a high-quality environment that fosters success of all participants in support of the school’s mission, strategies, and expected outcomes.
Standard 3：Faculty and Professional Staff Resources
3.1 The school maintains and strategically deploys sufficient participating andsupporting faculty who collectively demonstrate significant academic and professional engagement that, in turn, supports high-quality outcomes consistent with the school’s mission.
3.2 Faculty are qualified through initial academic or professional preparation and sustain currency and relevancy appropriate to their classification, as follows: Scholarly Academic (SA), Practice Academic (PA), Scholarly Practitioner (SP), or Instructional Practitioner (IP). Otherwise, faculty members are classified as Additional Faculty (A).
3.3 Sufficient professional staff are available to ensure high-quality support for faculty and learners as appropriate.
3.4 The school has well-documented and well-communicated processes to manage, develop, and support faculty and professional staff over the progression of their careers that are consistent with the school’s mission, strategies, and expected outcomes.
(2) Learner Success
Standard 4：Curriculum
4.1 The school delivers content that is current, relevant, forward-looking, globally- oriented, aligned with program competency goals, and consistent with its mission, strategies, and expected outcomes. The curriculum content cultivates agility with current and emerging technologies.
4.2 The school manages its curriculum through assessment and other systematic review processes to ensure currency, relevancy, and competency.
4.3 The school’s curriculum promotes and fosters innovation, experiential learning, and a lifelong learning mindset. Program elements promoting positive societalimpact are included within the curriculum.
4.4 The school’s curriculum facilitates meaningful learner-to-learner and learner-to-faculty academic and professional engagement.
Standard 5：Assurance of Learning
5.1 The school uses well-documented assurance of learning (AoL) processes that include direct and indirect measures for ensuring the quality of all degree programs that are deemed in scope for accreditation purposes. The results of the school’s AoL work leads to curricular and process improvements.
5.2 Programs resulting in the same degree credential are structured and designed to ensure equivalence of high-quality outcomes irrespective of location and modality of instructional delivery.
5.3 Microlearning credentials that are “stackable” or otherwise able to be combined into an AACSB-accredited degree program should include processes to ensure high quality and continuous improvement.
5.4 Non-degree executive education that generates greater than five percent of a school’s total annual resources should include processes to ensure high quality and continuous improvement.
Standard 6：Learner Progression
6.1 The school has policies and procedures for admissions, acceptance of transfer credit, academic progression toward degree completion, and support for career development that are clear, effective, consistently applied, and aligned with the school's mission, strategies, and expected outcomes.
6.2 Post-graduation success is consistent with the school’s mission, strategies, and expected outcomes. Public disclosure of academic program quality supportinglearner progression and post-graduation success occurs on a current and consistent basis.
Standard 7：Teaching Effectiveness and Impact
7.1 The school has a systematic, multi-measure assessment process for ensuring quality of teaching and impact on learner success.
7.2 The school has development activities in place to enhance faculty teaching and ensure that teachers can deliver curriculum that is current, relevant, forward-looking, globally oriented, innovative, and aligned with program competency goals.
7.3 Faculty are current in their discipline and pedagogical methods, including teaching diverse perspectives in an inclusive environment. Faculty demonstrate a lifelong learning mindset, as supported and promoted by the school.
7.4 The school demonstrates teaching impact through learner success, learner satisfaction, and other affirmations of teaching expertise.
(3) Thought Leadership, Engagement, and Societal Impact
Standard 8：Impact of Scholarship
8.1 The school’s faculty collectively produce high-quality, impactful intellectual contributions that, over time, develop into mission-consistent areas of thought leadership for the school.
8.2 The school collaborates with a wide variety of external stakeholders to create and transfer credible, relevant, and timely knowledge that informs the theory, policy, and/or practice of business to develop into mission-consistent areas of thought leadership for the school.
8.3 The school’s portfolio of intellectual contributions contains exemplars of basic, applied, and/or pedagogical research that have had a positive societal impact, consistent with the school’s mission.
Standard 9：Engagement and Societal Impact
9.1 The school demonstrates positive societal impact through internal and external initiatives and/or activities, consistent with the school’s mission, strategies, and expected outcomes.
