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Does Not Fit All One Size As AACSB focuses on its priorities for the future, the association's new board chair considers the challenges and changes that face management education. by Judy D. Olian ing after top business research faculty and are increasingly reliant on private sources of funding. Yet, they are also different on many dimensions. UCLA Anderson focuses exclusively on graduate programs, while Smeal has one of the largest under- graduate enrollments in the world. Their student bodies, alumni, and boards of overseers represent different regional and industry mixes, and their graduates head for different parts of the country to work. While the two schools share many similar attributes, their strategic goals and programmatic niches create distinctions that are unmistakable. As the scope of management education expands across the globe, we see A increasing diversity and fragmentation in the mission, size, geographic reach, programmatic mix, pedagogy, and resource base of business schools. It's become very hard to talk about management education in general without recognizing the many forms it takes and the many roads schools follow to deliver a high-quality educational product. Consider these facts. Institutions accredited by AACSB International are now located in 31 countries. They have full-time faculties ranging from nine to 250 and operating budgets that are as low as $1 million and as high as $150 million. Some serve only undergraduates, others offer only graduate programs. Many schools have created narrow niches, while others offer a lengthy menu of program choices. Some have multiple campuses all over the world, others choose to globalize through alliances, and still others bring the world to them. Some offer only on-site degrees, while others are partially or even entirely deliv- ered online. Acknowledging Diversity With AACSB's growth in the U.S. and internationally, we've become a much more heterogeneous organization. It's time we acknowledged the diversity of AACSB members and leveraged these differences as advantages within the busi- ness school community. Diversity means that students, faculty, and the compa- nies that hire our graduates have options that enable them to address their goals and special needs. It means that even the smallest schools can compete if they deliver their programs with excellence. It means that educators have the lati- tude to be inventive and bold in designing learning models, programs, and unique content without having to fit into a single mold. 32 BizEd SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007 t first blush, the school I call home has a lot in common with the school where I recently was dean. The UCLA Anderson School of Management and Penn State's Smeal College of Business Administration are both research-focused, and they operate within large and complex public universities. They are both chas-