Accredited MBA

What is an accredited MBA?

Considering the amount that you pay for an MBA - which can be more than the average annual salary in many countries - you need to know that what you're paying for is worth it. Considering you pay up front for the programmes there has to be some way for you to know that the MBA program at least lives up to a certain level of quality. This is what accreditation can ensure. Some bodies are set up by the schools themselves, but others are completely independent outside bodies. These visit the individual skills and inspect them to make sure that they meet prescribed criteria such as quality of faculty, teacher/students ratios, facilities and teaching skills. To find out whether your business school is accredited you should look at their brochures or ask them.

Some business schools are not happy with the accreditation process due to the fact that it mainly measures the inputs to the course - like how many of the faculty have a PhD, as opposed to the outputs of the course - like how many successful managers have been produced there. The other problem is that the accreditation system favours the "poorer schools" as there is a doctrine promulgated of lowest common denominator. This means that a school that even only marginally passes the accreditation criteria can feel that it can compare itself with the best school that passed the same accreditation scheme.

These are some of the reasons that schools such as Harvard have been eschewing the accreditation ritual - they say that the only true judge of the quality of the business school should be the market. In Europe, this was basically the case anyway until the late 1990s - as only one accreditation scheme existed - which was that run by the UK 's Association of MBAs (AMBA). But some new scheme have been emerging - and this has been driven by the globalization of the market for business education. If you take an MBA in a different country to where you want to subsequently work then you must ensure that your MBA is recognised. Also, there are more and more cross-border alliances being organized, and in order for the quality of prospective partners to be assured, the accreditation system is valued.

Apart from the AMBA accreditation system, there are two other major accreditation organizations. The European Quality Improvement System (EQUIS) is run from Brussels by the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD). The AACSB - the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business is the main accreditation agency in the USA . EQUIS and the AACSB have recently agreed a strategic alliance - which could lead to a joint accreditation initiative - which the business schools will like as they will save on paperwork.

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