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Rethinking research
Accreditors' primary responsibility is to ensure the educational quality of the schools they evaluate. But, as ACTA's recent policy paper on accreditation shows, too often accreditors either fail to perform this function, or involve themselves in matters that are beyond their purview, or both. And, as ACTA argues, accreditors need to return to first principles in order to reform a broken system.
A new draft report from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) offers some interesting insights. The AACSB established the first guidelines for business school accreditation in 1916, and since then it has been a leader in setting accreditation standards for business schools. In its new report--approved in April, and now open for public comment--the AACSB questions some of the foundational assumptions underlying our understanding of educational excellence. Specifically, the AACSB is asking whether business school education is enriched when faculty are actively involved in research. That question, in turn, compels the AACSB to ask a series of related questions: How exactly does faculty research benefit students? What kinds of research improve educational quality, and how do they do so? How can business schools measure the educational benefits of faculty research? And what should accreditors do to assess whether business schools are working to ensure that faculty research has a positive impact on student learning?
We tend to take it as a given that faculty research enhances students' educational experience. This is a foundational aspect of the university model, and so accepted is the belief that research and teaching go hand in hand that a growing number of colleges--traditionally understood as teaching-centered institutions--are building research requirements into their expectations for faculty as well as their undergraduate curricula.
But much of this philosophy depends on a foggy notion of alchemy--put research and teaching side by side, and they will each improve the quality of the other, the logic often goes. And perhaps the logic is best left murky--out of respect for the inherent imprecision of human learning and discovery. But, again, perhaps the murkiness is a problem requiring clarification.
This is the working premise of the AACSB report, which wants, above all, to explore ways accreditors can compel business schools to demonstrate that the research faculty members do serves students in some measurable, demonstrable way. Recognizing that business schools are special entities whose educational and research profiles are organized around a necessary but difficult tension between application and theory, the AACSB proposes that business schools should work harder to encourage a useful and productive "handshake" between their educational missions and their faculty research profiles.
The resulting recommendations center on finding new ways to value practical, applied faculty research (which tends to be seen as less worthy than prestigious, peer-reviewed publications) as well as on establishing mechanisms for quantifying the impact of faculty research. While accreditors have tended to focus on the volume of faculty research, the AACSB is proposing that they begin requiring schools to devise flexible metrics by which to measure how well faculty members' research advances schools' educational missions. The additional paperwork this requirement would create, the AACSB argues, would be worth it, since it would enable a much closer and more substantial "integration between institutional mission development and processes for individual faculty performance planning and appraisal." As the AACSB notes, "Such close integration is at the heart of accreditation processes for without such linkage there can be no assurance of effective, long-term curriculum delivery and, therefore, contribution to creating the high-quality managerial and leadership talent required for the future success of business schools and our economy."
Business school graduate education differs substantially from undergraduate liberal arts education. And yet, the AACSB is raising issues that are just as relevant to the latter as they are to the former. As such, in working to devise a new mechanism for ensuring the quality of business school education, the AACSB is modelling a style of creative, responsible thinking that could profitably be adopted by those whose job it is to ensure the quality and integrity of undergraduate learning.
The AACSB invites the public to respond to the draft report here.
Posted by acta online at August 13, 2007 12:56 PM
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