THE IMPACT OF BUSINESS PROGRAM ACCREDITATION ON RANKING AND ENROLLMENT FOR HBCU SCHOOLS

Purpose- This article evaluates the effect of business program accreditation on the ranking of the nation’s Historically Black Colleges or Universities to provide empirical data for program administrators. Methodology- The methodology in this study consists of a series of Mann-Whitney U tests to determine the association between accreditation and rankings and an ANOVA test to determine if enrollments are significantly different among accreditation types. Findings- The findings indicate that AACSB accreditation is associated with a statistically significant positive distinction in rankings and with statistically higher enrollments. ACBSP accreditation is not statistically corelated with rankings or enrollment. The effect of IACBE accreditation appears to be inconclusive in this study. Conclusion- These findings lend support to the conclusion that AACSB accreditation could enhance rankings and increase enrollment; this same conclusion is not supported for ACBSP accreditation, and further research is needed for IACBE accreditation. The key limitation in this study is the lack of analysis that a change to AACSB accreditation will cause changes in rankings and enrollment, and avenues for future research are explored.

Keywords:

Historically Black College or University (HBCU), business school accreditation, AACSB, ACBSP IACBE,

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