THE VALUE OF TRIPLE-CROWN ACCREDITATION
to those that have successfully achieved triple-crown accreditation. This reflects the institution’s ability to meet ever‑evolving international standards of excellence in business and management education. Triple-crown accredited business schools tend to attract high-quality students and faculty. Moreover, as representatives of the best in the sector, they often have strong alumni networks that can deliver productive relationships with industry and employers, thereby creating a virtuous circle for the benefit of all. To learn more, visit the AMBA & BGA website: www.amba-bga.com/ triple-crown-accreditation
that meets the requirements of all three organisations, therefore, offers a guarantee of quality that transcends individual programmes and permeates throughout an institution. Only one per cent of the world’s business schools hold triple-crown accreditation; their stakeholders are thus assured of high standards and peerless quality. This is important to prospective students, many of whom are international, as well as to employers, as they are looking for an external global benchmarking system to provide an independent quality kitemark. The best prospective students will often narrow their choice of school
Management education’s coveted triple crown equates to being formally recognised by the three most renowned accrediting bodies in the sector. This means simultaneously holding accreditation from the Association of MBAs (AMBA), the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) and the EFMD Quality Improvement System (EQUIS). Each accreditor has a different focus, with AMBA zeroing in on a school’s suite of MBA programmes, as well as other generalist master’s and doctoral degrees, while AACSB and EQUIS review programmes at both undergraduate and master’s level. A business school
Managing a portfolio of accreditations While the triple crown represents the pinnacle of accreditation in the global management education industry, most leading schools will still pursue and maintain further endorsements related to their relevance to their individual locations and programme portfolios. “When you write them all down, the list goes on and on. This is why we decided to put all that activity together in one expert team and they manage it. You need a professional service lead for it all and you need administrative capacity to stick things together,” Boughey advises. Having said that, the Exeter dean warns against leaving accreditation projects in the hands of single owners who “don’t talk to anyone, write everything and do it all themselves.” This lack of interaction and collaboration, he argues, constitutes “a dangerous way of operating”. He then describes how Exeter has a series of standing owners for individual sections or chapters associated with all the different aspects of an accreditation who might be at associate dean or a similar level within the school. “When it comes to writing material, they are always the ones responsible and then me, or someone like me, acts as the editor for it all,” he adds. It’s well known that institutions at the highest level ask a lot of their academics in terms of consultative and administrative commitments, alongside teaching duties and research expectations. But Boughey doesn’t believe that an inclusive approach to accreditation adds much to the pile at Exeter.
With less knowledge of local contexts, this badge can be more important for international candidates, as Boughey explains. “You’re looking for any market signal that tells you something about the quality of an institution and helps cut through all the noise.” However, he adds that this will commonly form only one part of an individual’s due diligence process “in conjunction with a whole set of other metrics, measures and indicators.” When it comes to recruiting and retaining faculty, meanwhile, a principal advantage of undergoing multiple accreditation processes lies in the way they enable a school to carve out and demonstrate a distinctive identity and areas of research strength, as Boughey describes. “When we’re out looking for faculty, the ability to clearly argue and position ourselves around our strengths gives us identity and this is made possible by the frameworks of accreditation.” Triple-crown status can also enhance a school’s cachet among potential partners and collaborators in industry. “It acts as a lever of legitimacy and language,” asserts Boughey, before outlining how accreditation procedures of audit, assurance and strategy alignment all resonate with companies that must operate within certain structures and meet regular reporting requirements. “In talking with business, being able to talk about our triple‑crown status gives us a common discourse. We are accredited by a set of global institutions – businesses don’t have to understand what they are; what matters is the the fact that we have that kind of weight behind us. In our case, it’s a set of three or more organisations operating on a global scale that are validating and approving what we do.”
14 | Ambition | JULY/AUGUST 2024
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