Blog

The MBA CSEA Survey Partnership with AACSB International

By R. Colin Nelson, Senior Manager, Business Education Research & Data Services, AACSB International

How does your school compare with its peers in terms of post-graduation employment outlook? How many of your graduates find employment within three months of earning their degree, and does your figure compare favorably with your competitors? Is the average starting salary for a full-time MBA graduate from your school a competitive recruiting feature? The answer to all these questions and many more can be found in AACSB International's proprietary data collection and benchmarking platform, known as DataDirect, which contains the world's largest and most comprehensive database of business school data.

 
The MBA Career Services & Employer Alliance (MBA CSEA) partnership with AACSB to host its Employment Data System for MBA CSEA members on the DataDirect platform is now in its fourth year of data collection. This partnership allows both our organizations to mutually benefit in a variety of ways. By enfolding our two complementary data collections into the joint Business School Questionnaire (BSQ) Employment Module, members of each organization can gain the opportunity to benchmark against their peers and competitors using the data provided in both the AACSB and MBA CSEA portions of the survey.

Schools that participate in either or both portions of the BSQ Employment Module subsequently receive access both to static Overview Reports containing aggregate data from all participants, as well as the custom reporting available through DataDirect's benchmarking tools. Among these are the Quick Reports, canned reporting tools with preselected data tables displaying most commonly asked-for data points:



In particular, the MBA CSEA Individual School Report allows a participant in the MBA CSEA Sections to print out their school's data in the proper format for a Standards Compliance Review (formerly known as Agreed-Upon Procedures, or AUP). Also available is the Report Writer tool, which enables participating schools to select specific variables from the survey with which to compare their own entries with those of a comparison group of their choosing:


Non-confidential data points can be compared on a per-school basis, while confidential variables can be compared against the aggregate data for the selected group of comparison schools. Up to 20 variables at a time can be selected for such custom reports.

We look forward to continuing our partnership with MBA CSEA!

Contributors

Contributors