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Headlines Accreditation Review and Revision Continues Among the most popular sessions offered at AACSB's Annual Meeting in Chicago last April were those titled "Changing Directions in Accredita- tion and Experimental Schools." Attendees crowded in to hear and discuss proposed changes in accred ita tion stan- dards and processes. For those who missed these sessions, the work- ing draft of the new standards and the hand- book for experimental reviews is posted on the Web at www.aacsb.edu. Members are encour- aged to review the stan- dards and make sugges- tions for improvements. According to Milton Blood, AACSB manag- ing director of accredita- tion services, the Blue Ribbon Committee on Accreditation Quality expects to have another version of the standards up on the Web site by August, if not earlier. The final set of standards will be put to a vote by members in April 2003. Andy Policano, BRC 'maintenance of accreditation,'" Policano says. Ten schools have un- dergone accreditation review under this experimental system, he says, and all ten have reacted positively to the experience. In schools that participated in the experimental review process, ques- tionnaires were sent to the dean, the State University. An additional 17 schools are scheduled to undergo the maintenance of accreditation process in the 2002–03 school year, he says, and several schools scheduled for fu- ture accreditation reviews have vol- unteered to be reviewed early under the new guidelines. Accreditation unit: After much discus- sion and consultation, says Policano, the committee has decided that the unit to be accredited "will be, as it is now, the entire institu- tion. The institution can ask that certain programs be excluded for various reasons, and the Business Accreditation Committee will, under the banner of AACSB, decide what to allow. This decision has re- ceived a lot of positive reac- tion because it allows the institution some discretion over what is included and what isn't." The schools up for re- chair and dean emeritus and professor at the School of Business, Uni- versity of Wisconsin-Madison, says the committee has pursued three goals: revising reaccreditation, con- sidering the accreditation unit, and revising the accreditation standards. Reaccreditation: "The first thing we 8 ALTHOUGH STILL UNDERGOING REVISION, THE ACCREDITATION STANDARDS ARE ABOUT 90 PERCENT COMPLETE. did was change the entire reaccredi- tation process to what we now call BizEd JULY/AUGUST 2002 chair of the review committee, the president, and the provost, asking them to evaluate the new system. Responses were "uniformly favorable as far as support for the process," says Richard E. Sorensen, dean of the Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Accreditation standards: Although still undergoing revision, the accred- itation standards are "about 90 percent complete," says Policano. he says, only one asked for an exclu- sion that the BAC decided not to allow, and a mutual agreement was reached. view will be asked to pro- vide a list of exclusions up to two years before the re- view takes place, which will ensure that both the school and the Business Accred i - tation Committee know exactly what is being con- sidered in the accreditation review, says Sorensen. Of the 36 schools coming up for review in 2003–04, REX BOHN/STOCK ILLUSTRATION SOURCE