AACSB Chief: What Keeps B-School Deans Up At Night

Approaching the end of her first year as the new CEO of AACSB, Lily Bi has met with more than 100 business school deans all over the year on an extensive listening tour

During the past nine months as the new CEO of the world’s premier accreditation agency for business education, Lily Bi has met with more than 100 business deans from all over the world. During eight extensive listening tour as the head of the AACSB International (The Association To Advance Collegiate Schools Of Business), she has pretty much heard it all.

Yet, what worries business education leaders might well surprise many. It’s not the declining rate of interest and ultimately enrollment in full-time residential MBA programs. Or the rising competition among schools that has left several markets, from online MBA degrees to specialty master’s programs, cluttered.

What really keeps deans up at night, she says, is the uncertainty of government policy. “It is a big challenge,” says Bi. “The second concern is enrollment. The selective schools probably never have to worry about an enrollment cliff (which will see the college-going population shrink across the next five to 10 years by as many as 15 percentage points). But there are enrollment problems in higher education, less so in business school but it will come. And finally it’s the attack on higher education and business schools. The perception is that it is the value of higher education is being increasingly challenged along with the value of business education.”

‘PEOPLE ONLY SEE US AS AN ACCREDITING BODY’

During an interview with Poets&Quants in Atlanta, the site of the AACSB’s International Conference and Annual Meeting, Bi was in a reflective mood. Her one-year anniversary as the new CEO is fast approaching in June. Her board approved a new strategic plan for the organization in Atlanta and also expanded the five-year period for accreditation reviews to six years to slightly ease the burden on schools.

But the biggest challenge may be one of perception. “People only see us as an accrediting body,” says Bi. “It is a good thing. Our brand is very strong globally, and we want to continue with that. But I feel there is something else we can do. If you think about our name, it is to advance business education. By 2030, I want us to be an accreditation plus and know what that plus means.”

She’s looking at two primary angles: an academy to teach people how to run schools and an initiative to refresh and repackage AACSB content entering the thought leadership space. “We want to go beyond accreditation standards which is the minimum requirement. Thought leadership is something different.”

THREE AUDIENCES: BUSINESS SCHOOLS, THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY AND STUDENTS

AACSB, with $23.2 million in revenue in fiscal 2022, already holds a dozen conferences a year as well as more than 100 workshops and seminars, both in-person and online, which largely assist schools in gaining accreditation and better understanding accreditation standards. Besides the roughly 80 people on the AACSB payroll, the organization relies heavily on volunteers–largely some 1,300 deans–to do site peer reviews of accredited or soon-to-be accorded schools.

In fiscal 2022 ending June 30th, the latest year filed with the IRS, the organization booked $9,3 million in accreditation fees, $3,9 million in conferences and seminars, and an additional $1,8 million from its international conference.

The newly approved strategic plan makes clear a mission to have a positive impact on society. “We refreshed that assumption,” says Bi, “and made clear that AACSB has three primary targets:  business schools, the business community, and the students, both prospective and enrolled.” 

A RESUME THAT BELIES HER SENSE OF ADVENTURE & CURIOSITY

The strategic review evolved around three core questions. Explains Bi: “The first question is who is your primary target? Can you serve the world with your 80 people? The second question is who else is in this ecosystem. And the third is how can we be more impactful? In the ecosystem, there are all kinds of students and faculty. So we do look at this ecosystem to be more impactful to the core.”

For Bi, business education is new territory. Until last June, Bi had spent a total of 19 years at The Institute of Internal Auditors in Orlando, Florida. Her first nearly nine-year stint began in 2005 as a director of technology practices doing IT audit. Other than a short tw0-year interruption as a senior manager for internal audit with Kirin Holdings Co. in Tokyo from 2014-2016, she was employed by the Institute.  When Bi returned, she was vice president of global certifications. When she left for the AACSB, Bi was executive vice president of global standards and certifications.

Her resume belies her sense of adventure and her curiosity about life. Fluent in English, Japanese, and Chinese, she was born in China to a mom who was a high school math teacher and a father who was an engineer. Bi never imagined a career as an auditor. “I almost wanted to be a dancer, but my mom said, ‘That is useless. What are you going to do when you turn 18?'”

COMING TO THE U.S. AS A SINGLE MOM, A FULL-TIME EMPLOYEE & A FULL-TIME MBA STUDENT

Instead, she earned a master’s degree in computer science. Selected as one of just 20 young IT engineers by the Chinese government, she was sent to Japan in 1992 at the age of 27. “Imagine China in 1992 vs. today when everything is different,” she says. “Moving to Japan totally changed me but I had to go back.”

In 1998, she migrated to Singapore to work as the vice president of the IT department at Mizuho Corporate Bank, one of the largest banks in the world. After five years in Singapore, Bi landed a job in the Dallas-Fort Worth area as a project lead and senior consultant for Sumisho Computer Systems.

“I came to the U.S. as a full-time single mom, full-time employee, and a full-time MBA student,” says Bi. “I specialized in coding and IT management, but I get bored easily. I said I needed an MBA degree. I went to the GMAT test.”

‘I LEFT CRYING’ AFTER HER FIRST TRY ON THE GMAT EXAM

She finished the first essay and then went to tackle the second when Bi realized she needed to redo the first one. “I left crying,” she recalls. “One month later I picked it back up and went to the University of Dallas.”

After little more than a year, Bi left Sumisho for the Institute where she would eventually provide guidance to chief audit executives and internal auditors. “After eight years of institute work, I felt I needed to move and I went to Japan for fun,” she says.  “Six months later, I got employed by Kirin Holdings. I was very lucky. I worked there for two and one-half years. I got married. My husband is American and a high school principal. I came back and went straight back to the institute for another six years.”

Her move to the AACSB, Bi believes, is not as dramatic as it may seem. For one thing, in addition to her MBA, she has a doctor of business administration from the University of South Florida’s Muma College of Business. And for another, she is working for a non-profit organization that serves its members. “From an association persepctive, it is really similar,” she says. “You have accreditation, membership and learning. But the customer you are serving is very different. It’s exciting. It’s very challenging but it is very rewarding.”

IS FUTURE GROWTH LIMITED? NO, SHE INSISTS

“The key theme is member-driven. Historically our value is more vertical. What are the core values today for the members and how are we going to enhance that? What can the new value be that they want to see. And how can we be the voice for business education? We want to advocate and amplify the value of business education.”

She sees most accreditation growth coming from outside the U.S. AACSB currently accredits about 1,020 business schools all over the world. It counts more than 1,900 members in more than 100 countries. With an estimated 17,000 business schools globally, that’s a 6% penetration rate, though in the U.S., where there are between 1,600 and 1,700 business schools, some 33% are AACSB accredited.

Is future growth in accredited limited? “No,” insists Bi. Currently, she adds, about 280 more schools are already past the eligibility qualifications in their efforts to gain accreditation. “You have 500 potentially in the membership pool that are not accredited. Many of them are working hard to understand the process. They may not be on the accreditation journey but are working on it. On average, the process takes 6.5 years to get accredited.”

‘EVERYBODY TALKS ABOUT INCLUSIVITY BUT EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE EXCLUSIVE’

Changing the review cycle from five to six years represents a focus on continuous improvement, Bi says. “Continuous evaluation is not on the AACSB. It’s on the individual school. We wanted to strengthen the third year reporting process. We’ll ask more questions based on what we see is important in terms of impact. We will make a mid-term assessment. The process will be enhanced. If there are some red flags we will do an assessment and communicate back to the school that they have three more years to pay attention to it.”

“We don’t have a goal of 5% growth. We don’t want to compromise our standards or the rigor of the process. If people can’t meet the standards, we give them time to do so but we won’t compromise. It would be wrong to set a target. It’s not the right thing to do to shrink it, either. Our standards are principle-based. On one side, people say thank you for your standards. We don’t want to be an elite exclusive club. Everybody talks about inclusivity but when it comes to accreditation everybody wants to be exclusive.”

DON’T MISS: Research That Matters: How AACSB Is Pushing B-Schools To Make A Positive Impact