AACSB Urges B-Schools to Adapt to a Global World

Graduate and undergraduate business programs must do better at making globalization central to the B-school curriculum, the accrediting group says

By Alison Damast

Business schools are lagging behind in preparing students for careers in an increasingly global world and need to become more strategic about how they weave cross-border content into their programs, according to a report released today by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).

The study, titled "The Globalization of Managements Education: Changing International Structures, Adaptive Strategies, and the Impact on Institutions," was presented to deans at an AACSB conference in Phoenix. It suggests that business schools need to make deeper and more sustained efforts across the curriculum to help students understand the challenges of conducting business in different cultures and countries. Robert Bruner, chairman of the AACSB Globalization of Management Education Task Force, which wrote the report, calls the study "a real wake-up call" for business schools.

"If we drill into the curriculum of the schools, there is a large gap between aspiration and achievement," says Bruner, who also serves as dean of the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business (Darden Full-Time MBA Profile). "Schools have a long way to go when it comes to globalizing their curricula, and the majority are still in their infancy in figuring out how to do that."

Another Milestone

AACSB, one of the leading accreditation agencies for business schools, is comparing the 335-page study with the 1959 Ford Foundation report written by economists Robert A. Gordon and James E. Howell. At the time, the Ford report criticized business schools' vocational approach to management education, setting off a spate of reforms that helped business schools refine their mission and elevate quality.

AACSB is hoping its report will have a similar impact, with the potential to transform the way business schools approach the globalization of management education, says Daniel LeClair, the senior vice-president and chief knowledge officer of AACSB and a member of the task force.

The study comes as the growth of business schools worldwide is accelerating. Some 12,600 institutions worldwide offer undergraduate or graduate-level business degrees, but fewer than 10 percent are accredited by AACSB or one of the other top accreditation agencies. From 1997 to 2007, 3,410 new graduate management programs were added, according to the report. At the same time, there has been a surge in student exchange programs, cross-border alliances between business schools, and joint-degree programs, the report says.

"Business schools are facing the biggest set of changes in more than half a century. Not since then have we seen this scale and magnitude of change happen," LeClair says.

Increasing Collaboration

In this competitive landscape, it has become more important than ever for business schools to be perceived as global, the task force notes. To accomplish this, the report says, business schools have done everything from incorporating global modules into their curriculums to recruiting a more diverse international student body. Collaborations with foreign institutions have been one of the more popular approaches in recent years.

In a 2008-09 survey of more than 200 AACSB member schools, 3,126 collaborations with other schools were reported and 1,212 unique institutional partners were identified. The vast majority of schools—more than 70 percent—said the reason they formed these partnerships was to encourage specific activities such as student-exchange programs.