How important is AACSB or ACBSP accreditation?

[Luiscastaneda25]

Right now I’m doing the UW flexible Business Degree, the program is AACSB, how important is it? I was thinking of switching to UMPI, and do an MBA later at a AACSB? Is it really important or not really? I just need to finish my degree this year.

[ss20ts]

Depends on your career goals and plans.

[Luiscastaneda25]

Depends on your career goals and plans.

When would you required this? So far through out my career that hasn’t come up.

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Depends on your career goals and plans.

When would you required this? So far through out my career that hasn’t come up.

[SweetSecret]

I spent time a few months ago searching job ads to find out who actually cares about AACSB accreditation. I saw only one business and numerous schools looking for professors. If you don't plan to teach then going with a program with another business accreditation would work just as well, and some employers are not going to care about business accreditation at all. So, how much it matters really depends on your career goals.

[innen_oda]

Is it really important or not really?

It generally matters to two groups:

1. Universities that need something to put in their advertising brochures to convince you to give them money.
2. Students who need something to convince themselves their university choice was the right one.

The first one frequently begets the second one, for obvious reasons.

If your university offers some sort of additional accreditation, that's great, but I would value a multitude of other factors (quality of instruction, how much debt you'll go into to pay for the degree, resources offered to students, convenience of the coursework and schedule in your life, etc etc) LONG before I considered this as a deciding factor.

You're probably not going to put this on your CV unless you REALLY have nothing else to offer, mentioning it during an interview looks desperate, and I've never seen a private-sector job adverts specifying any of these business accreditations. They probably exist somewhere, and perhaps the public sector, somewhere, in some county, requires them - but I've yet to see them myself.

[freeloader]

It can matter for people wanting to become CPAs. Utah requires you to have a graduate degree from an AACSB or ACBSP accredited university to sit for their CPA exam. There are a number of states that give preference to people with AACSB accredited degrees—people with non-accredited degrees have to have more total hours of accounting and business coursework to sit for their exams.  Don’t know if OP wants to become a CPA, but might be useful for others to know about.

I have also seen a number of job posts for accountants where having an AACSB accredited degree was either required or was basically a substitute for additional experience (5 years of relevant experiences OR an AACSB MAcc/MBA-Accounting type thing).

The other place I have seen this come up is with PhD and DBA programs at some AACSB-accredited schools requiring prior degrees be from AACSB accredited schools.

[LevelUP]

It can matter for people wanting to become CPAs. Utah requires you to have a graduate degree from an AACSB or ACBSP accredited university to sit for their CPA exam. There are a number of states that give preference to people with AACSB accredited degrees—people with non-accredited degrees have to have more total hours of accounting and business coursework to sit for their exams.  Don’t know if OP wants to become a CPA, but might be useful for others to know about.

I have also seen a number of job posts for accountants where having an AACSB accredited degree was either required or was basically a substitute for additional experience (5 years of relevant experiences OR an AACSB MAcc/MBA-Accounting type thing).

I was going to guess this as well that certain states might have licensing restrictions that require certain accredited degrees.

For a job, it doesn't matter.

[dfrecore]

Right now I’m doing the UW flexible Business Degree, the program is AACSB, how important is it? I was thinking of switching to UMPI, and do an MBA later at a AACSB? Is it really important or not really? I just need to finish my degree this year.

AACSB - gold standard
ACBSP - silver standard
unaccredited - bronze

Most companies don't care, they may barely understand the difference between RA and NA (many don't know and/or don't care about that either).

Many AACSB-accredited MBA programs want an AACSB bachelor's program (or you'll take more courses to "get up to speed" or some such).  Many ACBSP-accredited schools want an AACSB or ACBSP bachelor's to get admitted w/o extra courses.

So, if you want to go to an AACSB MBA program, find out if you need that AACSB bachelor's degree.  It may be worth it.

If you need to finish your degree this year, you may want to look at WGU or TESU if you have a good amount of credits to bring in.  They are both ACBSP.  A bit better than UMPI, and may meet the requirements for your MBA program better.

[Luiscastaneda25]

Thank you everyone for the reply.
I’m not an accountant and not planning on becoming an accountant.

For jobs I don’t think it matters, I need to finish the degree just to get into a leadership role VP, Director and Above I would need it. My employer doesn’t care about the school they care that you can perform and give results.

For example a VP that I work with, she’s my mentor graduated from TESU years ago. I believe the business program was not accredited at the time that haven’t stop her from getting a VP role.

Eventually after getting my Bachelors I want to get a Master. I don’t like WGU because they only transfer a few credits because UW have weird names and codes for their courses. Some courses are combined.

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I checked some affordable business programs. None required AACSB, only if you want to transfer credits.

[innen_oda]

It can matter for people wanting to become CPAs. Utah requires you to have a graduate degree from an AACSB or ACBSP accredited university to sit for their CPA exam.

This is quite untrue. I suggest anyone looking to become an accountant to read up on the requirements themselves, rather than blindly trusting comments like these.

I hope AACSB or ACBSP is paying you good money to post stuff like this!