Fili’s world

Taiwan’s business schools are on a race to get the business school AACSB accreditation. It’s a good goal for the Taiwanese universities to pursue, something on the grounds of - how did some professor put it - business schools ISO. The international students I know that are studying in Taiwan, be that Taipei, Xinzhu, Tainan or Kaohsiung, seem to care about that alot. Taiwan’s international political status isn’t that clear and a degree from Taiwan might be accepted differently in different countries and so many of the students believe that this would make their degree worth more and more globally accepted. Maybe.

I remember talking to a few Israeli professors before making the decision to come here and asking their opinions. I’ll save you the endless points against and the few points for, but I will say that when I mentioned AACSB they all either smiled or laughed. I think in Israel the one university that has AACSB is Tel-Aviv University (which is a good university) but Hebrew University of Jerusalem didn’t seem to make efforts to get it. “You’re either good at what you do or you’re not… people either know about you, your contribution to the business world and academics, or they don’t” was the main reasoning, and there were a few others with stronger resentment. Having heard about the AACSB accreditation process from a few of my global business schools friends I would just like to say that I have very strong doubts regarding what having or undergoing such an accreditation really means for the quality of the school. It does, however, make the schools take some time from their busy everyday routine lives to consider thinking about what they’re doing, and in general - that is a good thing.

What’s most interesting, perhaps troubling, is the way that AACSB is displayed in some universities. Turns out that AACSB has a few stages, the first being accepted as a member to go into a 5 years process where at the end you might get the accreditation. Being a member does not mean that you’re accredited, but some universities don’t explain this tiny difference, simply saying that they’re AACSB members.

Before coming here I asked all schools I was considering (NTU, NCTU, NCKU) about their AACSB accreditation. This is the reply from NCTU :

1. NCTU is a world known university. Our alumni include many famous CEOs in the globalized companies, such as Acer, TSMC, UMC, D-Link, Phison, etc. NCTU College of Management has been evaluated by the AACSB for the past two years and hopefully will get their accreditation later this year.

Here’s the answer I got from NCKU :

For the second question, we are the member of AACSB (please surf the Website http://www.aacsb.edu/)! And our website : http://www.management.ncku.edu.tw/management/english/eng.htm

So you don’t need to worry about the problem of degree recognized!

To which I replied :

Actually, surfing the AASCB website, the only Taiwan universities with AASCB (appearing here - http://www.aacsb.edu/General/InstLists.asp?lid=3 ) are:

• Fu Jen Catholic University (Taiwan)
• National Chengchi University (Taiwan)
• National Sun Yat-sen University (Taiwan)

There is no mention of NCKU anywhere on the website.

If you look it up, you’d actually notice that NCTU did get join that list. Good for them.

National Cheng Kung University (NCKU)’s College of Management is working at it too and you can actually see that in how the school is currently decorated, which is something I’ve already seen happening long long ago in National Taiwan University.

Anyways, if you’re looking for information about Taiwan’s business schools with lots of stats and their accreditation status, let me help you. Following are the official AACSB links for the business schools of Taiwanese universities (or should I say, arrr… “Chinese Taipei, China“) :

• Fu Jen Catholic University.
• NCCU - National Chengchi University.
• NCTU - National Chiao-Tung University.
• NSYU - National Sun Yat-sen University.
• NTU - National Taiwan University. 2008 - NOT accredited (yet).
• NCKU - National Cheng Kung University. 2008 - NOT accredited (yet - yeah, this one is quite empty).

I’ve heard an unconfirmed rumor today that this year’s AACSB committee denied NTU’s accreditation this year and will come back next year to see if they’ve improved on a few issues (faculty/student ratio etc.). NCKU’s undergoing this process right now and hopefully will see the committee come at the end of the current academic year.

Hope you might this information useful. Good luck.