VIEW FROM THE TOP
BUILDING A LOYAL FOLLOWING
With business schools around the world continuing to reap the many rewards of AMBA accreditation, AMBA & BGA CEO Andrew Main Wilson outlines why it’s well worth the effort for institutions to seek to gain this prestigious endorsement
A
s we approach the end of our AMBA & BGA financial year, I am very pleased to report that of our 292 AMBA-accredited schools, we have not lost a single one voluntarily over
benefits for an accredited school’s MBA students and graduates. In fact, more than 70,000 students and graduates are already members. Since this is the case, AMBA has much greater brand awareness amongst alumni than any other accreditation body. The clarity of our brand name – the Association of MBAs – also helps in this regard. AMBA is the only international accreditation organisation whose accreditation panel includes a senior, full-time AMBA executive. This significantly reduces both the time and resources required to manage an accreditation, both from the school’s perspective and in terms of our accreditation panel’s processes and workload. AMBA accredits a quality business school’s entire MBA portfolio, as well as some MBM programmes too. Many deans tell us that their AMBA accreditation process was much more insightful in terms of advice and future strategic growth ideas for their MBA programmes than other international accreditations. Apparently, they inevitably comment only briefly on the MBA
portfolio because they have to analyse all those issues associated with the whole school. We provide our AMBA-accredited schools with comprehensive market research data on global and regional annual MBA application and enrolment statistics; these include application-to-enrolment ratios by country, plus male/female and domestic/ international student ratios. In the last issue of Ambition , I mentioned the reality of the ageing demographic profile that is facing most countries within the AMBA network. I expressed my belief in the importance of our AMBA schools providing lifelong learning modules or stackable certificates for all those who have graduated from their programmes over the past 15-20 years. As population demographics reduce the number of young students, it naturally increases the amount of working-age managers and directors. We are currently looking at ways of supporting our schools with best-practice advice and potential endorsement of such lifelong learning programmes.
the past 12 months. Only two have reluctantly left the AMBA family: one due to the tragedy of severe social unrest in their country and another because of the enforced closure of its MBA programme. This strong loyalty to the association can, I believe, be largely attributed to the powerful benefits of AMBA accreditation. Our organisation is currently an exclusive community of just 292 leading business schools worldwide; fewer than two per cent of the world’s business schools have AMBA accreditation. Some 129 AMBA schools have also achieved the prestigious triple-crown accreditation – ie having been accredited by AMBA, AACSB and EQUIS – something that fewer than one per cent of business schools globally can claim to have achieved. AMBA is the only international accreditation organisation providing free membership services and
46 | Ambition | JULY/AUGUST 2024
Made with FlippingBook - Share PDF online