Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP): (n.) a specialized accreditation organization for business school which focus on teaching, rather than research institutions. ACBSP is recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) as a specialized accreditation agency for business education and currently has 1,134 member campuses, 167 of which are located outside of the U.S.
The Kansas-based accreditor has begun to spread its wings, especially in Latin American, where 16 universities in membership. Universidad Argentina de la Empresa became the first Latin American university to achieve ACBSP accreditation in 2006. Now six universities are accredited and 10 more are in candidacy for accreditation.
In August, ACBSP announced its first international president and in January, they opened a permanent European office is Brussels.
The ACBSP adheres to the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. The Baldrige education criteria help institutions define, monitor, understand and evaluate student outcomes and growth. The ACBSP began using this method in 1998.
The ACBSP tests student outcomes in online programs by pre-and post-testing students, gauging the amount of course work digested. Then, the ACBSP compares that data to test scores either within the brick-and-mortar university or to other online colleges.
The ACBSP exists, not to rival long-time business school accreditors Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the accrediting body of traditional business schools like Harvard, but to provide accreditation using different, student-focused criteria including student test scores and grades.
Unlike the AACSB, the ACBSP looks at individual programs, i.e. undergraduate, MBA degree programs, accounting, and also offers accreditation to fully-online schools, such as the University of Phoenix.
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