Accounting Accreditation

July 1, 2024 Update

In the spirit of continuous improvement, AACSB enhances the accreditation standards and interpretive guidance annually. Updates are based on feedback from peer review teams, accreditation committees, deans, accounting program administrators, and other representatives from the AACSB business education community.

On July 1, 2024, AACSB released its annual update to the Standards for Accounting Accreditation. These updates are intended to provide greater clarification and do not represent material changes. The standards were revised to reflect the new AACSB six-year accreditation cycle. All references to five-years were updated to six-years. Additionally, the reference to the Accounting Program Questionnaire was removed since the questionnaire is now part of the Business School Questionnaire.

Development of the 2018 Accounting Accreditation Standards

An appointed Accounting Accreditation Task Force developed the current accounting standards, which were adopted by the AACSB Accounting Accreditation Council in April 2018. The six standards are organized into three categories: strategic management and innovation for accounting academic units, accounting learning, and teaching, and accounting academic and professional engagement and professional interactions.

The standards are built on the three themes of engagement, innovation, and impact. These themes are integrated to achieve continuous quality improvement. 

Since AACSB accounting accreditation is supplemental to AACSB’s business accreditation process, the standards for AACSB accounting accreditation build on the business standards and follow a similar structure to the business standards.

Therefore, the accounting accreditation report and documentation do not duplicate information included in the business accreditation report. The business accreditation report and documentation are the foundation on which the accounting accreditation report and documentation are added.