
AbstractWe ask whether Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accreditation has a meaningful impact on higher education admissions. To do this, we use the Synthetic control Method to explore 19 U.S. institutions which first achieved this certification recently. We, first, restrict attention to business school enrollment. While initial evidence suggests that the accreditation is associated with a decrease in enrollments, we show that this is complicated by non‐parallel trends prior to accreditation. Compared to their peers, institutions who seek out accreditation were experiencing flatter business enrollments. Correcting for the non‐parallel trends, we fail to find evidence that AACSB accreditation halts this negative undergraduate enrollment trend. We do find potential benefits to graduate business enrollment. Second, considering institution‐wide effects, we fail to find an impact on undergraduate applications, first‐year enrollment, price, or quality of the incoming student body.
| selected citations These citations are derived from selected sources. This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | 6 | |
| popularity This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network. | Top 10% | |
| influence This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | Average | |
| impulse This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network. | Top 10% |
