Business Accreditation
Earning AACSB accreditation signifies a business school’s commitment to strategic management, learner success, thought leadership, and societal impact.
AACSB Business Accreditation Standards
2025 Annual Update
In the spirit of continuous improvement, AACSB enhances the accreditation standards and interpretive guidance annually.
On February 28, 2025, AACSB released its annual update which took into consideration the legal and political environment surrounding higher education and accreditation and reframed terms that have become politicized in the U.S. and around the world. These changes to the 2020 Guiding Principles and Standards for Business Accreditation and Interpretive Guidance uphold our mission and values, while mitigating risks for our members. The technical edits also clarified that Scholarly Academic faculty are indeed expected to produce peer-reviewed journal articles as part of their portfolio of scholarship.
The standards fulfill the following key objectives:
- Reinforce long-held AACSB commitments to mission focus and peer review
- Emphasize a principles-based and outcomes-focused approach, as well as relevance for business schools now and in the future
- Recognize the changing landscape of student demographics and reflect the activities we envision business schools of the future will undertake to ensure continuous improvement and high quality in business education
- Elevate the importance of thought leadership in the context of a school’s mission.
- Characterize the guiding principles that represent key values to AACSB
The nine standards are organized into three categories:
For accounting accreditation standards, click here.