Accounting Accreditation: Value Added Or Waste Of Resources?

Authors

  • Kent St. Pierre St. Joseph's University
  • Andrea Everard University of Delaware

Keywords:

Accreditation,

Abstract

In a forthcoming paper Everard, Edmonds, and St. Pierre (2014) question whether the AACSB has achieved its mission of recognizing excellence in business education and whether it has shown continuous improvement in its efforts since the change to a mission driven focus. In this paper, the authors expand on this topic and address the value of accounting accreditation from the perspective of the market it serves, whether accounting accreditation has diminished in value because of the quality of the programs being accredited, and whether accounting accreditation is an idea that has run its course. We conclude that since the move to a mission driven focus, the AACSB has diminished its brand, has failed in its ability to
differentiate quality accounting programs in the higher education market, and has not met its objective of continuous improvement for the organization itself. Unless changes are made in the organization, its
value in the higher education marketplace will diminish over time and the brand could become irrelevant.

Author Biographies

Kent St. Pierre, St. Joseph's University

Kent St. Pierre is the Sutula chair and professor of accounting at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. He received his PHD in accounting from Washington University - St. Louis. His current research interests include market value of accreditation, legal liability of public accountants, and problems with teaching non - technical issues in accounting. He has published in Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance, Accounting Horizons and others and has served as the editor of Issues in Accounting Education and Journal of Accounting Education.

Andrea Everard, University of Delaware

Andrea Everard is an assistant professor of management information systems at University of Delaware. She earned her PhD in management information systems from University of Pittsburgh. Her current research interests are human-computer interaction, open education and cross cultural issues in information technology. She has published in Journal of Management Information Systems, Communications for the Association of Computing Machinery, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, and Journal of Global Information Technology Management.

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Published

2013-12-05

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 1 (2013)

Section

ABR Journal Articles

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