Today, every person, every person, without exception, must take personal responsibility for learning. If you don't, you will be left behind. And I don't care if you are president or if you are the lowest person on that totem pole, the highest person.
Every person must take responsibility. So that's a little bit different. It's not because somebody told you you have to do it because you recognize that you must do it because you will be left behind if you don't. And it's not that's not just AI, that's that's the whole ecosystem of what's happening in the world. What's our place in the world.
We must be continuously improving and we must be adapting.
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Welcome to the table. You tuned in to the academic boardroom with Dr. J and Dr. E, pull up a chair. Higher learning, higher stakes.
Welcome back to the academic boardroom where we sit down with power brokers shaping the future of education. I'm your host doctor Eli Joseph. Today we are joined by Dr. Stephanie Bryant, one of the most influential leaders in global business education, as the executive vice president and chief accreditation officer for AACSB International.
She oversees the accreditation of more than 1000 top business schools worldwide, and leads the development of the standards that define excellence in business education across the globe. Stephanie chair the creation of access 2020 and 2026 accreditation Standards and is a recognized thought leader on innovation, quality, leadership, and the future of business education. Before joining AACSB, she served as a business school dean, professor, and researcher, bringing decades of experience to her work shaping the next generation of business leaders.
Dr. Bryant wild to the boardroom.
Thank you so much. A great pleasure to be here.
All right. I want to just jump right into it in terms of the simplest terms and defining AACSB and what you guys do. I want to know what I'm not me. I know what it is, but the audience, you know, if you want to inform the audience, what is AACSB and and what do you guys do and why is it important for students and employers?
What would you say to them?
I say it all the time. I would say that is the gold standard in trust in business education globally. So what we do is we quality assure business degrees in you said it over a thousand colleges and universities around the world. So I've sat with many parents and many students and potential students. And when they're looking at who to choose for a business school, they are going to very often look at the accreditation of the school.
AACSB is the accreditation that you want to have. It does not get any better than that for business degrees.
As far as AACSB, we're talking Columbia. And why you stern that the cream of the crop top five you name it, you name it. They're they're the ones that are being accredited by the be.
That's correct.
Okay. Sounds good. Now, I'm pretty sure when it comes to the rigorous process, you know, of obtaining the accreditation, I want I want to know in terms of, you know, the war through process because I know Brooklyn College, when I was actually there, I was attending, and they were going through their accreditation process. It was a big deal.
And I wanted to know, like what? What? Why was it a big deal at the time? But at the same time, the rigorous process of obtaining the accreditation of AACSB.
It is a big deal. And so right now we have about 300 schools that are in the process of earning AACSB accreditation, takes, on average, a little bit over six years to attain the accreditation. So it's not something that you get in a year. And the reason for that is we have very rigorous processes, a school in order to be accredited.
You asked me about the process for it there. There's a whole committee of people that oversee that process. So the school needs to walk through a journey. And that journey is one of aligning with our nine accreditation standards. And so what they have to do, for example, is demonstrate high quality and faculty demonstrate high quality and curriculum. What are they doing in with their financial resources?
Are they are they solid financially? All those kinds of things. Learning outcomes huge for us. So are there graduates learning what they say they're learning. So they have to actually show us all of that. And then scholarship and research is important as well. So you can imagine that each of those takes quite a while to align with. And we want to make sure that the school is in fact ready when we do accept them into the process and they're set up to be successful.
So that is our goal. And it is a very big deal, not just for the initial accreditation, but we've been around 110 years. This is our 110th year, and we have schools that have been accredited for about that period of time. And every time they have a visit, it's every six years is always a big deal.
As far as you know, it's hard to get in, but I'm pretty sure you what you're in, you have to maintain that level of excellence. So I can imagine just very few schools that lose their accreditation, you know, at the AACSB. Am I correct or am I slightly incorrectness assessment.
Yeah. So AACSB if I had to if I hear a phrase like to stick with your with your listeners, I would say it's about continuous improvement. So we're not looking for perfection. We're looking for continuous improvement. And when a school has a peer review visit our peer reviewers are there not to pass or fail them, but to say, show us how you're continuously improving and that you're a lot continuing to be aligned with our standards.
So it's not like a pass fail if a school is not aligned with the standards. We have a process where we help them, so we coach them. We'll have people that work with them. So it's it's not like a pass or fail. Oh you didn't you didn't do well. You lose your accreditation. So most schools if they once they reach and they attain the accreditation process, they attain the accreditation credential.
They don't typically lose it. Sometimes people will say, you know, we decided to voluntarily say, this isn't for us. AACSB for accreditation is voluntary. It's not a required accreditation, but it's it's unusual for a school to lose it because our process is very, very good. Our network is a very strong. And we assist schools and we help them if they are struggling in an area.
I wanted to talk about your journey from a business school, dean onto becoming a CEO at AACSB. I, I wanted to know, I want to walk. I want to walk with you in terms of your journey, in terms of what was it like transitioning from one domain to the next, and do you feel as though that transition was it worked out smoothly based off of your experience?
I want to kind of understand, like how how how it is to transition or how it was like for you to become a school dean, from professor to school dean and also ultimately becoming AACSB.
was not really interestingly, a huge leap for me. So when you oversee a business school. So then I did that for seven years. I had a long career in academia. The last seven years was as dean of a large business school. You're really focused on that school and you can see across that school what are the issues, what are the problems?
How do you navigate resources for that school? How do you navigate the strategic plan for that school? The faculty in the student learning? I mean, all of that is where your focus is. That's your landscape. Now, when I became chief accreditation officer, all of a sudden I don't have just one school. I have 1080 schools that that now are in my ecosystem.
So really what changed was not a horizontal look. It became more about altitude. And so what a privilege it is to be able to be in that ecosystem and influence business schools all over the world. So the work didn't really change. It's just that my vision got a lot bigger.
As far as the vision. Do you consider growth being one of the main tenets of, you know, broadening the vision wherever you go as far as becoming a dean or as a chief accreditation officer, do you think growth, being able to grow from point A to point B in a period of time, do you think that's considered a good sort of a good metric in terms of whether or not you're performing or you're improving in your role or the organization role as well?
So I would say in answer to that, growth can be defined in a couple of ways. If you're talking about personal growth, I absolutely think that you should always be striving to grow. I strive every day to grow in every definition that you can think of, of that word. If you're talking about growth in numbers, the, you know, do we want the business school to be larger?
I don't think that that is always the right measure. That really comes down to the school, the school's mission, what the school's strategic intention is. And that is very, very specific to the school. And so growth may or may not be what they want to do, but growth in the other sense, like we're always learning and adapting new technologies, new everything in the world.
In that sense of the word, yes, we should always be growing.
That's funny because I think about growth in terms of what I do in mind. Dev was as well, and I always consider that sometimes. And I know the saying that, you know, numbers don't lie. I tend to disagree with the notion sometimes, because sometimes I believe that quality you can't really measure quality in terms of numbers, you know, in terms of quality of who's coming in, who's teaching, who's who's becoming administrators.
I think that's that's totally different. But I also wanted to talk about artificial intelligence in AI. And sometimes, you know, the growth and the challenges that it may it may come about in terms of higher education. Do you think that some schools are some schools are doing well with adapting to artificial intelligence and or in terms of I know here at the AACSB we're talking about the top schools or top business schools, but do you think like, you know, AI, artificial intelligence in a macro level, do you think that can sort of have a positive effect in terms of business schools or a negative effect?
Do you think it's challenging or it does it depend on, you know, the school's resources and what's presented to them as well?
So AI is in pretty much every conversation, every conference I go to, you know, that's the topic of the day. We do credit a large number of schools in 60 more than 60 countries and territories. So their schools, some are small, some are large, some are private, some are public. You just have this whole different plethora of types of schools.
So that's why our standards are principles based. Because you can't write rules that everybody can follow. It doesn't work that way. So we focus on the principles. In your question about AI, I would say there's a maturity curve. And so we're about three and a half kind of going on for years now of being in this new AI world.
And and so it's say there are there were first responders, there were people that were early adopters in innovation theory. And they came out and they embraced it and they jumped on, and they wanted to learn as quickly as they could. And then, of course, you know, you've got people that still are not where they need to be.
So if you think about it, you know, you're an academic with an academic background. If you think about the normal distribution, I would say we're probably following a normal distribution in this. So you have some people who are on the lower end of that maturity curve. People are they're on the higher end of that curve and a whole lot of people in the middle.
And I think people desire to develop those skills. I tell you what's really hard, Eli, is the work of the dean and the faculty is all consuming. And so you're really busy trying to do your everyday job, which is teaching and managing service and research and publish and do all the things that all of us do. And if you're a dean or a president or provost, you've got to worry not just about yourself, but all these people that you're responsible for.
So our everyday lives are filled every minute of every day is field. So I think it's really challenging to make space, to upskill yourself, to upskill your faculty. But that's really where people are today. And different schools have different strategies for doing that. The schools, Ashby schools, I would say are generally on the other side, at least 50% or higher on that curve.
But there are some that are still really working on that, and they are looking at how can they get people on on scale, right. You're not talking about one person or two people. You have to get all your faculty upscaled, and you got to figure out how to embed technology and AI into the curriculum. So it is a gigantic transformational change.
They say, you know, since 2021, we've been in this fifth industrial revolution. And it is it is truly a revolution. I think back to the internet in 1995. It's kind of like that, like the internet didn't exist. And then, you know, in general terms, existed for many years, but we didn't really like use the internet. It wasn't in our everyday world.
And then all of a sudden it was this, oh, here's this thing. What do we do with this? I equate this moment of AI, which is not a moment. It's a continuum. I equate this to that time we're learning about this thing, and we don't really yet even know the potential. But we're all doing our very best to consume, upskill, transfer that knowledge, and then help our students also be where they need to be.
Because employers want this skill and we can't ignore it is not going away. It's not hype. The signal to noise ratio is very high on this. So yes, there's noise, but the signal is very real on this. So I think it's not going away. And we have to figure out how to scale the knowledge and get people up to speed faster, even faster.
And you know what's interesting? Because we we did our interview with Dean Angie of NYU, she's at the School of Professional Studies, and she mentioned that she mentioned the same the same points that you raised here. And she also said that it's not a matter of we agree, it's not a matter of a four year degree plus a two year master's degree or an MBA degree.
It's no longer that type of model. It's more so of a continuous subscriber model where you continuously going to remain educated and you're taking various courses. Certificate program is now becoming a a trend. Now it's a positive trend as well. And I think that's pretty much the same thing when it comes to you guys in terms of how you guys accredited institutions is how you're continuously teaching and upskilling the students and making sure that they're retaining the knowledge and they're becoming marketable for employers as well.
Right. So continuous improvement is the watchword. That is everything. That's one of our guiding principles, continuous improvement. And that can be applied to this discussion. It can be applied to really all that we do. It's interesting to see how higher education I've been in higher education for over 30 years and it has really evolved. There was a time that you could sort of know your subject and walk in, and you were, you know, I knew accounting and I could teach accounting with the best of them.
And you did have to kind of stay up on your field. And I was a CPA, so I had to stay up in my field and all that. But that's nothing like what it is today. Today, every person, every person, without exception, must take personal responsibility for learning. If you don't, you will be left behind. And I don't care if you are president or if you are the lowest person on that totem pole, the highest person.
Every person must take responsibility. So that's a little bit different. It's not because somebody told you you have to do it because you recognize that you must do it because you will be left behind if you don't. And it's not that's not just AI, that's that's the whole ecosystem of what's happening in the world. What's our place in the world.
We must be continuously improving and we must be adapting. And I think you didn't ask me this question, but I'll throw this in if you ask me what the one skill is that our professors, our our students, our administrators, everybody must have. I'll tell you that one. Skills. Adaptability for sure.
I was going to ask that. They're very I always thought that question at the very end.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm.
That's all right. It's totally fine. I always read that question at the end. If there's one skill that, you know, whether it's leaders, students, academics to take with them in terms of understanding. But I have another question. I can I can have no question for you. Okay. Towards the end, I was wondering, you've been you've been achieved accreditation officer and you've been here for for quite some time.
I want to tap in to see whether or not you have any favorite cases or any favorite schools that you probably have worked with or collaborated with. You know, I'll set aside the bias, but I want to make sure I want to see if there are any favorite schools that you have worked with in the past.
They are all my favorite schools. That's like asking, are you do you have your favorite children? So so no, I, I continue to learn. One of the privileges I have with this job is I get to travel to the schools very often and get to be in all parts of the world. So name a place. I've probably been there and I am always enamored with the faculty, the students, the learning.
Every school I walk into my look around and I notice what is his school about. And you can see it. You can see it as soon as you come in the door. And so I don't have a favorite school. I learn as much as I can from every school, and I, I don't. It's not like I have all the knowledge in the world.
I'm also learning as well. And then I try to use that knowledge to help our environment all be better. But it's it's really a privilege. I have been in schools, in very rural areas and experienced schools that didn't have a lot of resources, but they were doing phenomenal work, phenomenal work. I will tell you about a program, but I won't name the school.
There was a program that I visited in India. It was in India while back, and I was in nine different parts of India over a period of, I think, 17 days. And there was a school that had a program that have always remembered, and this was a very rural, under-resourced area. And this school, what they did was they had a connection to the business community, and some of their graduates had gone on to be very successful.
So they had a program where they, these very successful graduates partnered back with some of the younger people, and they would help these young people who didn't have the kind of resources and background and maybe advantages that some other people had. And I will never forget, they were very excited that I was there, and they wanted to kind of, you know, do a program and show me.
So their their students and their mentors were there, and their parents, the parents of the students were there. And this young boy, he was he was about 13 or 14. He stood up and he talked about his vision for himself and what he wanted to achieve. And he had been paired with a very successful professional who had also come through that program.
And I was listening to this young man talk about what his vision for his life was. And I looked over at his father, and his father had tears running down his face. And I just thought, what an amazing thing to have the advantage of an opportunity like this. And that is why I do this work. That is why ask, does this work?
Because we want to make a difference in the world and we do. And it looks different at every school. So that's just one I could tell you many, many, many stories like that, but I've never forgotten that, father. And after that program, they finished the program. I went over a spoke to the father, and he didn't speak English very well.
But I understood what he was saying, and he didn't have an education. But he was so proud that his son was having an education and was going to be able to be successful. And that, I think, is why we're here.
Yeah, I love that story. I really do, because when you look at the dynamics, parents may not have an education, but they put their all into their son or daughter. Absolutely. And that's that's amazing because now you can kind of see the investment that is being made from the older generations of the younger generation as well. I wanted to tap into the practical side of this interview here.
When we talk about, you know, the organizations or the companies that you may work with or collaborate with, I was wondering for the companies that you may have worked with in in the Enterprising Side or consulting, do you think that when it comes down to allocating resources and support, do you think it's important that AACSB or other top accrediting bodies?
Do you think it's important for them to collaborate with companies and organizations to see what their needs are? And so that way you can support and facilitate those resources to the institutions that that you guys are. Credit.
1,000%. So business education is not very impactful if it's not extended to connections with the business community. So it's actually built into our standards. So you must have what's called learner to learner, learner to faculty and learner to business industry engagement. And that is a requirement of our standards. So that piece that you're asking about is that third piece.
So learner to business community and schools express this in different ways. But it's kind of like when I studied accounting. When I studied auditing in particular, you know, you're reading it in a book. It's not real until you actually are doing the work. You meet the people and you put your hands on it. Right. So nothing substitutes for that collaboration with the business community for two reasons.
Number one, that you want your learners to be able to understand what they're walking into and what's going to be expected of them. The other side of that equation, the reciprocal of that is we want our our employers, if you will, companies that we work with, which are pretty much everybody, you want them to work with the academics to make sure that the right material is included.
So it's a symbiotic relationship. We need each other to be successful. So our academics recognize that. And it is a requirement that you're highly engaged with the business community. And it works. It helps both both parties.
I was wondering, what are some of the major signs that, you know, an academic program is is delivering on a true return of investment when it comes to educating business students?
So, you know, it's interesting, the question it's it comes up frequently. What is the role on a university degree? A business degree in particular does have a very high ROI. It's one of the highest. And that is really judging it quantitatively. I think there's much more than quantitative, but quantitatively speaking I would look at salary trajectory, career trajectory.
What are you going to be able to do? What doors will be open? I often talk about opening doors. Education opens doors. Business education opens doors. Business is the language of the world. And so, so in that sense, I think you actually could quantitatively people do that. How much more do you earn with a business degree than with a other degree in something else?
So you can do that quantitatively? What's more impactful to me is what business schools and what those individuals that graduate from our Arc schools, what they go on to do with their lives, what impact do they make in the world? And I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about we often say business, business, education can change the world, and I don't say that lightly.
So societal impact is a very, very big theme for us. I would say a measure of whether there's an is a quantitative thing. But I personally think even more important than that is what does that business graduate go on and do that makes the world better. And we actually do have a standard on that. So we don't just talk about it.
Actually there's a whole standard on it. And business schools are required to show not that they're doing good deeds. We want them to do good deeds. That's all great. But how are they using their business school expertise to make the world better? And you can look, I just posted a thing on LinkedIn on that, and there's a whole video on it that you can watch.
But I'm really proud of that. I'm proud that we aren't just about financial security and things like that. We are equally concerned with making the world better, because look at all the skills that business school graduates have. We had these this phenomenal tool set. So you see all the problems out there. We should be a part of the solutions.
Yeah I agree it's not just about the linear aspect of I'm going to business school. I'm going to get my I'm going to get my degrees, and then I'm going into a concentrated field just to climb up the corporate ladder. More than just that, it's impact. How are you helping others, how you're trying to pull other people that may be behind you in terms of experience, how you're mentoring, how you're sponsoring different individuals?
I think it's just more than just I'm going to school for two years. I'm going to take a sabbatical from my from my corporation, and then I'm just going to go back and climb up the ladders more than just, you know, that linear, the linear stages of just progression and you can quantify it, but it's more so of quality in terms of what is important for what business school is all about.
I was wondering, when it comes down to, you know, the important steps of, you know, a credit accreditation. I know there's multiple business accreditations here, right? But obviously Aacsb is, you know, the top. I was wondering what separates you guys from the others, what separates you guys from the others. And let's say someone could say, oh, you could say the top five business schools.
And you can say, okay, let's let's put that aside. What are some other things that separate you guys as a premier accrediting body for business schools and all of educational, you know, overall.
Would say probably the most distinctive feature is our network. So our network is very, very large. So if you think about 1060 1080 accredited schools, the number changes over time. We accredit schools over time. That's in the neighborhood of where we are today. But think about that's the school, the number of schools, the number of students who are covered by Aacsb accreditation.
That means they're in an accreditation program at any point in time. 5 million, 5 million. Number of faculty somewhere in the neighborhood of 250,000. So when you talk about what distinguishes us, the reach, the influence, the ability to influence and network and be at the top levels of conversation, be in the circles of conversation where decisions are being made.
That's actually.
And I was going to add, I was I was thinking about associations to it may not be schools that are accredited, but also other organizations and other institutions that may be associated with the Arc as well. I think that can also that can also tie into the network and the reach that you guys have.
100%.
Okay. I was wondering, when it comes down to the the difference. The difference is in institutions that you may have visited based on region, America, Europe, Asia. What are some of the differences that you have encountered in terms of the institution that whenever you visited? What are some of the differences that you come across?
Really fascinating. You know, I had not I never traveled outside the US until I was 45 years old. And and then I started traveling and had some opportunities and kind of got bit by the travel bug access. That was one of the attractions to me was I would have a chance to do that and see other parts of the world I'd never seen.
I was amazed, amazed just at the difference in how you greet somebody. How do you greet someone? It matters. It matters how you greet people in different parts of the world. And so I had to learn a lot of cultural things that I did not know.
You know, even things like, you know, rules about alcohol, for example, would you order a glass of wine at dinner or not? In some parts of the world, you would not do that a lot. Lots of different things like that. And then one of the things that I picked up along the way is I try to say my opening greeting, if I am privileged enough to give like a keynote or a talk.
And that happens frequently if I'm traveling and visiting schools. I try to do some of that talk in their language. And so probably about my my favorite language is Arabic. And so I find it to be a very lyrical, beautiful language. And so I did a talk in Qatar not too long ago, and I actually memorized part of my speech in Arabic and then practice with some of some of our colleagues who were from that part of the world and they, you know, helped me to polish it, shall we say, a little bit.
And when I was on the stage and I was in that audience with, you know, all the people who were, you know, of that area in that region and people who are very prominent people sitting on the front row. I was very, very nervous about actually doing that, and I did it. And then people like gasped that I would like to speak in Arabic.
And, and they then they clapped for me, which was very nice. They appreciated the effort. I'm quite sure it wasn't perfect, but you know, when I, when I have the opportunity to visit other parts of the world, I try to be an observer. I try to be a learner, and I try to be super, super aware that not to bring my culture and impose that culture, I try to be a learner of that culture and, and, you know, assimilate and learn what, what is important in that culture.
And I have learned so much I could never we don't have enough time to talk about all the things I've learned, but where we are in the world, I hope people I hope, I hope everyone gets an opportunity to travel to other parts of the world, because it helps you to understand that you're just one person in one position.
You can't really understand that unless you experience other cultures, and I am grateful for that.
I was thinking the way that they do business as well is something that's totally different in terms of how we do business here in America as well, and how they operate, how they do everything communicate and the the technical skills and also the soft skills as well. But speaking of tentacles and skills and soft skills, do you think?
And I know most people like to emphasize that you need to sharpen and continue to grow your technical skills, and that's fair. And I and I really agree, but I was wondering how underrated is the soft skills. Communication skills? How underrated is that in terms of what we do in in business?
I think soft skills and now they call them durable skills. So the vernacular is evolved a little bit. You'll hear people now talk about durable skills that's become even more prominent in the conversation, especially with AI, so that you see that those two things connected very often. And it hasn't changed. It hasn't changed. It's always been that way.
But I think the conversation that AI has really elevated it because knowledge today is really a commodity. Knowledge. Knowledge is quite democratized today. So whatever it is, I want to know, I can find out in two seconds on the computer. So but what can I not do in two seconds? Understand how to communicate with someone in a different culture.
Understand how to analyze a problem. So one of the interesting things is our our accreditation requires schools to show that their students are learning. What used to be evidence of learning would be something like this. Our students must be able to show their critical thinking skills, and we're going to demonstrate that evidence through doing a consulting project that was very, very typical.
They're going to do a consulting project, and then they're going to come and present that. You can't really look inside the black box of critical thinking. The evidence that was provided was this finished product, like, here's our report. And and that was accepted. That will not be the way the future that will not be the way the future, because AI can generate a report and a student can practice and get in front of a class and present that report.
Does that tell you the student learned how to know. It doesn't. It doesn't show you that they can critically think. So the kinds of things, the durable skills you're talking about, I would say that's team building, critical thinking, problem solving, communication skills. All of those are going to have to be demonstrated in a different way, and they will become much more important because the tools are so powerful.
The tools can create outputs. Do you know if that's a good output or not? You better be able to figure out if that's a good output or not. You better be able to explain to a client whether that's a good output or not, and why. You better be able to evaluate five different possible outcomes or different outputs, and figure out which one is the right one.
Those are the skills that we have got to focus on transferring, so they become elevated.
As interesting I agree. I was also wondering whether or not and I believe I believe that every institution, especially here in America, should be able to implement AI policies, policies on AI, whether it's it's full support, partial support or no support at all. Do you also agree with that is when I'm pretty sure you know, ACS also have some guidelines that can help assist institutions that can implement AI policies.
Right.
So you're really speaking about AI governance. And, you know, we're all kind of figuring this out. It's moving so unbelievably quickly. We're all figuring this out now. Like where the lines where are the lines between what's acceptable and what's not acceptable? What is your intellectual property and what is not your intellectual property. And, you know, the legal profession is helping to also tease a lot of this out.
So I don't know that anybody has it completely figured out yet. It's being written right now, but I would say is some general best practices. You need to significantly transform something to be able to claim it as intellectual property. That would be sort of a best practice with AI. For example, let's say that a school was turning in an accreditation report.
Do I care if the school used AI to generate some of that content? Not as long as it's accurate, I don't care. There are many tools that we have. What what I have cared in 1995 if somebody used the internet to find some information, it's kind of like that, right? So so we're figuring out where the lines are, what you can claim as your intellectual property and not, and what is what is responsible use.
I would say that's also part of the AI governance framework. And those frameworks are just being stood up now. But what we do say is you must be ready to stand behind anything that you turn into Aacsb, any report that you turn in, any numbers that you turn in, you must be able to stand behind it. We don't so much worry about if any tool they used a million tools.
They used Excel, they used Grammarly, they used the internet, they used AI to generate some things. I don't really think that that's the important thing. Is the data accurate? Is the data guarded in terms of privacy, security? Those of course are huge issues. And so that's kind of where your AI governance framework is going to come in. Data privacy, data security, those are more important I think.
Now I do have a separate question in terms of advice. Let's say you have an institution that may not be they may not be performing well, up to par in terms of how in terms of the ASPs guidelines and benchmarks here, what are some of the advice that you have provided? I know probably very case by case, but what are some of the advice that you have provided these institutions?
Well, again, it depends on what the issues are, but here's how we set up our peer review visits. So a school has a visit every six years. Typically it's going to be three experienced deans that go. And we have people that have done 100 business literally. We have people that have done this for years and years. So we have some very, very experienced people, more than a thousand people in our network that do these visits.
And so we we have set this process up to be consultative. So of course the schools must align with the standards. So if you don't have a strategic plan, you're out of alignment with the standards. And we're going to help you to get in alignment with the standards beyond, you know, that kind of thing. We will ask our our schools when they are getting ready for their visit.
We say, let us know what your problems are because your peer review team is here to help you. And so in the peer review team gets out ahead of time. And then when they're on the visit they will say, we see that you've requested, you know, you're having problems with your MBA enrollment just to pick something out of the air.
What those deans will usually do is they will say, here's what we've done at our school. Here's what's been not not here's what you have to do because we did it. But it's a sharing. And that to me is one of the greatest benefits and beauties of AACSB accreditation. It's not a compliance exercise. It's not a check the box.
It's a continuous improvement. So our deeds are very amazing about saying, okay, I see that you're having trouble with enrollment right now. Enrollment seems to be a very big problem. As I'm sure you know, resources in general, there are a lot of budget cuts out there. So many schools struggling with that. And so we tell schools, don't hide that.
Tell us what your issues are. And then our deans will say, here are some things that you can think about. And we actually put that into the peer review team report. It's called consultative guidance. They don't have to follow it. But it's I mean, you might have 50, 60, 70 years of experience among those three deans. And so they're going to be very experienced.
And how often do you have someone who's there who really understands your environment, who can say, we've walked in your shoes? Here are some things you can think about, because it's not only from their experience as a dean, but they've been on tons of peer review visits. They won't share names of schools because every peer review visit is held.
Incompetence. But you can share the learnings. Here are some things we've seen that have learned that we've learned that have worked for others. One of the things I'll give you an example. So there was a school not long ago that was having trouble with, they really wanted to have a succession plan, but they didn't know how to go about doing that.
So they had a lot of people who had been in their upper level positions for a long time. And so some people on the visit said, you know, we have an exchange program where we will take people from another school and they'll come and do a semester at our school. Let's see an associate dean at another school. And they can sort of shadow and be in our in our little world for a while.
So we can sort of teach them. And so there's, there's all kinds of things like that that people will share freely. And because we're all in this network together and we're all about improving business education. So just the examples vary. But that's the greatest benefit of AACSB 's accreditation is the network that you get access to, the advice you get access to, and people who genuinely want to help you shine.
I have another we have much time. I have one question, one question that I would like to ask. And I asked this question before as far as normalize it. Now in terms of the advice that you would tell students and faculty members and you mentioned adaptability, right. But I was wondering if you were to sit down with yourself 25 years ago and provide some sort of advice that you would give yourself, knowing what you know now, what would it be?
I would say, Stephanie, you're going to have lots of opportunities. They're going to be many doors open to you. Think carefully about what you want your life to be about because time passes quickly. So as opportunities come your way. Think about make your choices based on where you want to end up, and that's what's going to guide you as to which door you should go through.
And all of us have many opportunities, and it's tempting to chase opportunities. But does that opportunity in front of you? Does it get you where you ultimately want to be when your legacy is all said and done? I that's what I would tell myself.
Wow. Because when you think of it and it's hard to to make decisions based on where you want to be, it's so hard to make decisions because it's hard to forecast what might happen in the future if you take this route or if you take this opportunity. But that's some good advice. You know why? Because when you look at it, you're not only forecasting, you're also forecasting and understanding what's what's to come.
And you're sort of doing this a little bit of adaptive ability in terms of the skill that you need to make adjustments on the fly, or you're building a plane while you're flying it, you're making sure that you understand what's going on. You're learning on the way on the way to success.
I think that's right. And, you know, I decided a long time ago that the most important thing, professionally to me, was to leave the world better to make a positive impact on the world. And so that's sort of the lens that I use as I evaluate opportunities. And, you know, when this opportunity to come to AACSB came to me, I asked myself, is that going to further my goal of leaving the world better?
And the answer was yes. And so that helped me to make those decisions. But Simon Sinek is famous for, you know, the why, understand why. Why do you do this? What is your purpose? I think those are more than words, and I would encourage everyone that hears this podcast take some time and just reflect on what is it you want your life to be about.
Truly, if you had to say it in a sentence, what would that sound like? Put that up on your bathroom mirror. Look at that every day and let that be your guide for how you make decisions.
About the Bryant. I appreciate you for joining us here at the Academic Boardroom. Thank you so much for taking the time out to hang out with us, Eli.
It was my pleasure. I hope we get a chance to come across each other again.
Of course. Of course, most definitely. This is The Academic Boardroom and we are signing out right now.
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