In a bid to persuade executives to become business school lecturers, the AACSB has introduced a five-day seminar to enable these managers to move into academia.

In the UK a similar programme to the newly-announced Bridge programme has been in operation for some years. However, the Foundation for Management Education (FME) supports those managers making the transition for two years in the workplace if they already hold a doctoral degree and three years if they are educated to masters level.

The US programme was developed following findings in a 2002 AACSB report, Management Education at Risk, which revealed concerns about a dwindling number of PhD graduates, a trend that had pushed schools to hire more non-PhD faculty. Judy Olian, dean of the UCLA Anderson school of management chaired the AACSB committee which wrote the report. “The (Bridge) programme is consistent with AACSB’s efforts to ensure that there is a rich pipeline of qualified professionals, beyond business PhDs, who can bring their expertise to the classroom,” she says.

The Bridge programme is a joint project of the AACSB and two California schools, the Merage school at UC Irvine and the Marshall school at the University of Southern California. The first programme will be held from October 22 at the Merage school and the second at the Marshall school in May 2007.

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