Does Excelsior College Have ACBSP for their Business Program

[worldtraveler]

Does Excelsior College have ACBSP accreditation for their business programs? What are the requirements for accreditation? Thanks

[SteveFoerster]

Does Excelsior College have ACBSP accreditation for their business programs?

Not according to the ACBSP web site.

What are the requirements for accreditation? Thanks

I expect that's best gotten from them.

[Tark]

In the US, there are three CHEA-recognized professional accreditation agencies for business programs.
They are AACSB, ACBSP, and IACBE.

Excelsior currently has IACBE accreditation for its BS degrees in Business and Accounting.
Excelsior does not currently have accreditation from AACSB or ACBSP.

[nosborne48]

Okay, I'm confused again. I thought IACBE was for European schools?

[SteveFoerster]

Okay, I'm confused again. I thought IACBE was for European schools?

No, IACBE is more or less a drop-in replacement for ACBSP. You may be thinking of the European Council for Business Education, which I think at one point had some sort of mutual recognition agreement with ACBSP.

[Eric]

Why the redundancy?
AACSB, ACBSP, and IACBE.

Isn't one specialty accrediting agency for Business programs enough?
I understand that one of these is more prestige bur is there significant difference in philosophy or approach to business education accreditation?

There is also AMBA accreditation in UK but that I view as European,

[SteveFoerster]

Why the redundancy?
AACSB, ACBSP, and IACBE.

Isn't one specialty accrediting agency for Business programs enough?
I understand that one of these is more prestige bur is there significant difference in philosophy or approach to business education accreditation?

Yes, AACSB is focused on research, whereas ACBSP and IACBE are focused on teaching.

Anyway, competition is good -- why not let there be more than one?

[Tark]

AACSB was established in 1916. It has relatively high standards for selectivity and research, which many less selective, teaching-oriented business schools are unable to meet. So AACSB only served a part of the large business school market.

ACBSP was established in 1988 to serve the rest of the market. However, the founder of ACBSP eventually came to disagree with the direction that it was taking; he left and founded IACBE in 1997. So ACBSP and IACBE were both started by the same guy. AACSB, ACBSP, and IACBE are now all recognized as business school accreditors by CHEA.

Apparently ACBSP and IACBE have been in discussions about closer cooperation. However, IACBE recently rejected this idea, claiming that ACBSP and IACBE are too different in their approaches to accreditation:

IACBE Board of Directors Votes Not to Explore “Combination Opportunites” with the ACBSP

Orlando, Florida, USA (April 2013) – At its Annual Conference and Assembly Meeting in Orlando, Florida, April 17, 2013, the Board of Directors of the International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education (IACBE) voted overwhelmingly not to pursue discussions with the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP) regarding the exploration of "combination opportunities" between the two accrediting bodies for business and management education.

The decision of the IACBE Board reflects the directors' belief that such a combination of the two accrediting bodies would not be in the best interests of the Assembly or its membership. In particular, the decision of the board not to pursue discussions with the ACBSP was taken for the following specific reasons:

- The IACBE is distinctively different in its approach to advancing academic quality in business and management education. The philosophies of accreditation, quality assurance processes, accreditation practices, and organizational cultures of the two accrediting bodies are incompatible.

- The IACBE has a unique, distinctive, and stronger value proposition for the quality assurance of business programs in comparison to the ACBSP.

- There are significant differences between the IACBE's Accreditation Principles and the ACBSP's Standards and Criteria for accreditation. The IACBE evaluates academic quality in terms of educational outcomes whereas the ACBSP focuses more on prescriptive standards for the inputs into the educational process.

- Maintaining separate accrediting organizations promotes healthy competition thereby preserving clear alternative accreditation choices for institutions of higher education worldwide.

In practice, I suspect that most ACBSP-accredited business schools would qualify for IACBE accreditation, and vice-versa. However, most ACBSP-accredited or IACBE-accredited business schools would probably not qualify for AACSB accreditation.

[Eric]

Thank for the explanation.

In professional or specialty accreditation I guess I'm used to AMA, APA, ABET etc as sole accrediting agencies in their filed.

There is I think NAIT or ATMAE that is small way competes with ABET but my MBA degree is only RA accredited.
It never bothered me but it appears maybe I should have earned MBA with specialty accredited as well?
So far my MBA is best described as providing new tool set to be better at my job.
No changes occurred nor were planned in my career since I earned it.

[Tark]

In professional or specialty accreditation I guess I'm used to AMA, APA, ABET etc as sole accrediting agencies in their filed.

Professional accreditation is most important in fields where a state-issued professional license is required to practice. In those cases, it makes sense to have uniform accreditation standards, developed by a single agency. So for example, an ABA-accredited law degree qualifies for the bar in all states, an ABET-accredited civil engineering degree qualifies for a PE license in all states, etc.

The business field is different. There is no professional licensing for "businessmen", so professional accreditation is totally optional for business programs. Since business accreditation is optional anyway, it doesn't really matter if there are multiple business accreditation agencies with different accreditation standards.

[Tark]

It never bothered me but it appears maybe I should have earned MBA with specialty accredited as well?

As indicated above, specialty accreditation is totally optional for an MBA degree. A few considerations:

1. If you are pursuing an accounting (CPA) license, then in some (not all) states, it can be helpful (but not absolutely necessary) to have an AACSB or ACBSP degree. In practice, the vast majority of business grads do not try to get a CPA license.

2. In general, AACSB schools are better known, and are much more likely to have nationwide reputations, than ACBSP or IACBE schools. Nearly all of the best-known universities in the US (Ivies, state flagships, etc) have AACSB-accredited business programs. The best-known business school ranking in the US (from US News & World Report) only considers AACSB schools. In general, most schools with ACBSP or IACBE accreditation (or with no specialty accreditation) are not particularly well-known or prestigious.