Outcomes Assessment: The Role of Business School and Program Accrediting Agencies

The concept of student outcomes assessment has become the new challenge facing higher education in the 1990s. The two accrediting agencies for business schools and programs in the United States have chosen to take separate, but similar, approaches to outcomes assessment in their accreditation requirements. Because of the extent to which this recent outcomes assessment movement is driven by external sources, business school and program accrediting agencies may better serve higher education through efforts to educate business educators on the advantages and limitations of outcome measuring tool development and use.