The Gonzaga School of Business Administration has something to boast about as its accounting program has earned accreditation by The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, the AACSB, indicating the high-quality of Gonzaga's undergraduate and graduate accounting programs.
According to Dr. Kay Carnes, associate dean and coordinator of accounting programs, out of the 9,000 business schools in the world, only 560 have business accreditation and only 170 have accounting accreditation.
"Students who earn an accounting degree from Gonzaga obviously have a degree with extra prestige," Carnes said. "A program that earns and maintains AACSB accreditation demonstrates a strong commitment to high-quality management and accounting education and commits to continuous improvement."
Students have seen a change in classroom instruction and intensity with this new accreditation of the accounting program. Sophomore Stephanie White, an accounting major, said she has heard accounting classes are becoming much more difficult since the accreditation came about, yet she finds it to be a good challenge.
"The accounting classes are definitely the harder classes of the business program and they are becoming more demanding," she said. "But even though these classes are becoming more difficult, the accreditation is pushing students to work harder in the classroom."
Achieving accreditation is a process of intense internal review, evaluation, and adjustment. According to a university news release, a business school must develop and implement a plan to meet the 21 AACSB standards.
"These standards mostly have to do with quality of students who enter the program, faculty who teach, and processes to maintain continuous improvement," Carnes said.
To earn accreditation, Gonzaga's accounting program had to go through a very time consuming process. Consisting of 16 steps, which range from visitations from AACSB mentors to an applicant self-evaluation, the program can take several years to complete. Carnes was sure that Gonzaga's program met the standards, but documenting the statistics and numbers from various stakeholders was a challenge, he said.
Now an accredited accounting program, Gonzaga will be visited every five years by a peer review team that reviews the program's continual standards, Carnes said.
AACSB was founded in 1916 and began the accreditation program in 1919 and standards for accountancy programs across the nation were adopted in 1980. It is an association of more than 1,100 educational institutions, business and other organizations in 70 countries devoted to the advancement of management education worldwide. It is the premier accreditation agency for college business schools and accounting programs.
According to its Web site, achieving accreditation from the AACSB is the trademark of excellence in management education. The accreditation assures businesses and CPA firms that business schools advance business and management knowledge through faculty scholarship as well as produce graduates who have achieved specific learning goals.
"[Gonzaga] students pass the CPA examination with far higher than the national pass rate and are in great demand by employers," Carnes said. "[Gonzaga] is often the only university in Eastern Washington visited by international and regional CPA firms."
The University of Notre Dame, The University of Southern California, and San Diego State University are three of the colleges and universities that have received accounting accreditation. In the Northwest, Washington State University and the University of Idaho have received the honor while Santa Clara University, Marquette University and Loyola University Chicago are other Jesuit institutions that have been accredited.
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