Dear Mukul,

I would be very opposed to the idea of a set of standards derived from either the market place or big business as a means of evaluating the "conformance" or "validity" of a degree.  

Here in the U.S. for example it was business school graduates that have moved companies to just over the border into Mexico were environmental laws are much more relaxed to save millions over time at the expense of the Rio Grand River Valley. It was business school graduates that use a cost benefit analysis to decide whether to use a toxic element or not.at the expense of the heath of people. It was the same for toxic wast dumping, outdated pharmaceuticals being shipped over seas as a means of driving up profits, known cancer causing agents being used in products at the expense of the public health. The latter two examples being of course measured as to the likely damages from law suits and health costs vs the profit made in killing people like the cigarette companies did and continue to do.What would [innovation be defined as? How would it be taught? Would a moral component be added? I doubt it.

What would the courses titles be? One might be, 'How to swindle your employees out of millions in promised retirement pay", or "Cutting health care cost by moving to "right to work states" or how to itemize the cost of a death as a tax deduction.No sir, the market place alone is no place to determine the accreditation of a business school.

The best place for accreditation I would suggest not a court of law but a court of public health, the Church or a board of ethics focused on heath and welfare of both the environment and all of humanity.

Douglas 

Many thanks Douglas

Dear Mukul and Douglas and everyone,  I strongly agree with Douglas.  The question for me is what is the purpose of business education?  when we have answered it we may be in a position to have someone accredit it. 

As we know, students have become decreasingly concerned with anything resembling ethical behaviour and one key reason for this is that they are increasingly only interested in earning vast amounts of money as fast as possible.  'Education' is therefore increasingly simply a tool or an instrument to that end.  Employees are a tool, society is a tool, and so on; the end result is a dystopian 'society' in which corporations simply use people (of course, there will always be the nebulous cloak of 'CSR' so we can all pretend that there is such a thing). For that reason, 'market demand' can never be an indicator that the teaching profession, through these accreditations should use. 

There are interests other than those of the students, in other words and that is no bad thing.  There is such a thing as society and its needs.   

Richard

Thanks Richard for your thoughts. The question that keeps returning is whether the business schools are involved in imparting education in business or they are in the  business of education. 

well quite Mukul, they are in the business of education.  So accrediting them becomes a different sort of exercise from assessing their quality!

Richard

AACSB participant standards are focused almost entirely on input factors that AACSB contends affects the quality of business education. These include such input factors as student admission policies, staff support sufficiency, and faculty sufficiency. Faculty sufficiency standards are notably rigorous and require faculty be properly credentialed (with emphasis on large percentages of faculty having a doctoral degree in their primary teaching area). Faculty sufficiency standards also require a significant percentage of faculty to be engaged in recent published research to maintain currency and relevancy in their teaching fields.

AACSB assurance of learning standards are focused primarily on assessment of student learning outcomes and making continual improvements to business education based on the results of those assessments