Massey University has gained international accreditation in business from the Florida-based Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International).
AACSB president and chief executive John Fernandes congratulated Massey and College of Business Pro Vice-Chancellor Professor Lawrence Rose. "AACSB accreditation represents the highest achievement for an educational institution that awards business degrees," Mr Fernandes said.
Achieving it involved a process of rigorous internal review, evaluation, and adjustment. "It is the hallmark of excellence in business education, and has been earned by less than 5 per cent of the world's business schools."
Professor Rose mentioned the College of Business worked many years to meet the 21 standards required for the accreditation. The University produced a 250-page self-review document for an international panel made up of deans or pro vice-chancellors of other member universities. The panel read the report then visited Massey over three days in June this year to test what had been said and to meet staff and students.
The panel's report commended Massey for its strong tradition of extramural programme delivery, which it said did not dilute the educational quality in any way. "If anything, the reverse applies. This may be considered something of a best practice. The structure and delivery flexibility of Massey University and its College of Business is clearly designed for 'outreach' within the New Zealand community. This applies to dispersed learners and to the institution's focus on serving the needs of adult learners. In spite of this flexibility the college is still well positioned to serve international students who come to New Zealand to study full-time and through dual degree partnerships."
The report also praised procedures for ensuring standards for papers are equivalent across all campuses including extramural, the well-established and transparent workload policies, flexibility that allows staff to pursue short-term and longer-term career objectives such as higher qualifications, and its system of performance review and planning.
The peer review process will be repeated every five years to check that Massey continues to meet the accreditation standards.
Professor Rose said the accreditation is "tangible recognition from our international peers of our efforts to provide the best business education for our students“. “This accreditation covers a wide variety of business degrees ranging from accountancy to agricommerce, MBA to Master of Finance.”
“We are now part of a special group of College of Businesses around the world which have this accreditation. This will have an impact on the quality of staff we can recruit worldwide, the quality and number of students especially internationally; and we plan to continually improve our programmes and engagement with our key stakeholders and the business community as we put processes in place to maintain the accreditation,” he told Business to Business.
"Our business community has given us great support through our advisory board and everyone in the College of Business worked hard to achieve this success. The fact we are now one of 570 accredited colleges of business out of the 10,000 worldwide is a testament to their achievements."
“We plan to continue to expand our business relationships and this accreditation should give our business partners more confidence that the skills we claim our students have after completing our BBS (Bachelor of Business Studies) and post graduate business degrees will be instilled in them. Specifically our mission is to ‘Create Leaders and Transform Business’.”
Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey congratulated staff and students involved in the accreditation process. "Many of the defining qualities of Massey were demonstrated in this process and were, in fact, vital to its success," Mr Maharey said. "AACSB had to satisfy itself from the outset that Massey is an autonomous entity committed to academic freedom. Our excellence in research and teaching, the opportunities we provide through our unique multi-campus and distance-learning integration, our international, national and regional connectedness, our innovation and collegiality were all rigorously tested in this exercise."
