With business schools worldwide facing a shortage of faculty members, the US-based Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business is endorsing a series of programmes to try to swell the numbers of business school faculty.

The AACSB Bridge Program aims to prepare senior business executives for professionally qualified faculty positions within business schools. The new course is due to begin in May.

A second programme, the post-doctoral Bridge to Business Program, targeting new and experienced doctoral academics from disciplines outside management education for positions within schools, is also due to begin. This programme will be offered at five AACSB-accredited schools. Successful participants will receive an AACSB-endorsed certificate.

However, one of the schools involved, Grenoble Ecole de Management in France, which is running the programme in a consortium with Newcastle University Business School in the UK and Chapman University in Cailifornia, has already run into problems.

The programme was due to start in June or July, but Jean-Jacques Chanaron, director of the doctoral school at Grenoble, says this has been postponed until the end of the year.

The consortium had anticipated 10 to 12 participants, but has so far only attracted two students. Prof Chanaron believes the stumbling block to participation is the $15,000 price tag.