Configure AACSB Reports in FAR
Announcing important changes
AACSB 2020 Business reports are available directly within FAR. Eligible administrators can access reports in-product without submitting a support request.
To generate accurate AACSB reports in Interfolio's Faculty Activity Reporting (FAR), institutions must ensure that faculty data is complete, properly classified, and configured to align with AACSB requirements. Faculty and administrators enter and maintain key data in FAR, including teaching activity, scholarly contributions, degrees, faculty qualifications, rank, and peer review status. This data is used to populate AACSB 2020 Business reporting tables and must be configured consistently to support accurate reporting. In addition, institutions must configure AACSB-specific settings in FAR, such as grouping courses and assigning AACSB as the accrediting body. This article explains how to prepare and configure your data to support AACSB reporting in FAR.
AACSB reports only include data from default Sections, Activity Classifications, and Faculty Classifications. Custom configurations will not appear in reports. Check out the FAQ below for more information on why data may not appear in AACSB reports and to view which sections and data types populate each AACSB reporting table.
Prepare, Configure, and Access AACSB Reports
1. Prepare and Configure AACSB Data
Before generating reports, ensure your system is properly configured and contains complete, accurate data. These configurations are required to ensure AACSB tables (such as Tables 3.1, 3.2, and 8.1) are populated correctly.
-
Create Program/Course groupings as needed for AACSB reporting.
Program/Course groupings may be required to accurately reflect degree programs in AACSB reports, depending on your institution’s structure. If your institution reports on multiple degree programs (for example, Undergraduate and MBA), grouping courses by program may be necessary to ensure accurate reporting. If your institution reports on a single program, grouping may not be required.
Course Prefixes and Courses must be set up in FAR before creating Programs/Course Groupings.
- Check configuration and data:
- Capture Degrees on the Profile Form
- Capture Scholarly Activities/Creative Products on the Activity Forms using standard sections
- Ensure AACSB Activity Classifications are active and visible to faculty
- Create/review the Input Classifications form for AACSB
- Configure Faculty Classifications for AACSB (for example, rank, qualifications, and contributions)
- Determine plan for populating data:
- Faculty Members will populate Intellectual Contribution data and AACSB Activity Classifications via manual entry (an existing integration or upload a Bibtex/Ris file) in the Scholarly Activities and Creative Productions section. Alternatively, if the Scholarship data is available, talk to your PM or AM about having that data loaded for faculty. There may be a charge.
- An Administrator will:
- Load Teaching data via the Courses Taught base data file.
- Load most AACSB Faculty Classifications (FC) via the FC base data file.
- Update other AACSB FCs via Input Faculty Classifications on the Administration page.
Required Data
Enter and maintain teaching (Courses Taught), degrees, scholarly activities, faculty qualifications, rank, and peer review status. Data can be entered manually or loaded through data imports, depending on your institution’s processes.
Data Entry Methods
The following data entry methods determine how information is captured and made available for AACSB reporting.
- Teaching: Courses Taught base data.
- Degrees: Manual entry by faculty or administrator; File load by Technical Product team.
- Scholarship: Manual entry by faculty or administrator; File load by Technical Product team.
- Faculty Qualifications: Faculty Classification base data upload and manual data entry.
- Program Course Groupings: Manual Entry.
- Faculty Classifications: Bulk upload or enter manually. Typically the responsibility of whoever is managing these reports (typically someone in the business school/college.
- Activity Classifications: Typically captured via an Initiated Activity Input Period or a standard Faculty Activity Input. Can be set so that only business faculty see these items when entering activities.
Note that the standard configuration activity and faculty classifications have been labeled specifically for AACSB and should not be changed.
2. Verify AACSB Data
The top tip for AACSB reporting is to verify data is accurate and ready for reporting. The information below explains how users can prepare using in-product reports in Interfolio once configuration is complete. This allows users to drill down by count, sort faculty, and review individual faculty details.
A grouping for courses and assigned AACSB must be created as the accrediting body in FAR.
- Confirm faculty are assigned to the correct courses and program groupings.
- Review Activity and Faculty Classifications.
Use available reports (such as Activity Input Reports or scholarly activity reports) to validate data completeness and accuracy. Check the table below for report-specific guidance on how to validate AACSB data in FAR.
| Report | Verification |
|---|---|
| Teaching Metrics |
Use the Activity Input Report to verify that faculty teaching data and courses are correctly assigned to programs. Filter by Teaching section, Teaching metric, and Program or Activity Classification to review program-level data. |
| Intellectual Contributions |
Use the Activity Input Report or Scholarly Activity Reports to verify that faculty scholarship is correctly classified for reporting.
|
| Table 3.1 (Faculty Sufficiency and Qualifications) |
|
| Table 3.2 (Deployment of Participating and Supporting Faculty By Qualification Status In Support Of Degree Programs) | The Faculty Classification for Faculty Sufficiency and Course/Program Groupings with metric numbers from the Courses Taught for those Courses. |
| Table 8.1 (Summary of Intellectual Contributions) | Activity Classifications entered by or on behalf of faculty will populate Table 8.1. That information is drawn from the scholarship section of Faculty Activity Reporting based on the Activity Classification = Intellectual Contribution Review Type and AACSB Scholarly Type |
Data to Maintain
- Teaching Report (15.1 / 3.1, 15.2 / 3.2): One academic year of teaching data. This typically excludes Summer Term.
- Faculty Qualifications (15.2 / 3.2): One year of qualifications
- Scholarship (2.1 / 8.1, 2-2): Five years of scholarship.
3. Access and Generate AACSB Report
AACSB 2020 Business reports are available directly within FAR for eligible administrators. Access to AACSB reports is determined by your institution’s configuration and user permissions. If AACSB reports are not visible confirm your access with your institution’s FAR administrator
- Verify that all the relevant data is in FAR and has been properly audited by the appropriate individuals at the institution.
- After completing data preparation and verification, navigate to the Reports section in FAR from the navigation menu. Scroll down to the 'AACSB - 2020 (business)' section and click the View Report button.
- From there, you can apply filters and generate report outputs based on your reporting needs.
FAQs
Why is my data not appearing in AACSB reports?
To ensure your data appears in AACSB reports, you must use the default Sections, Activity Classifications, and Faculty Classifications provided in FAR. Data entered in custom sections or using custom Activity or Faculty Classifications will not be included in AACSB report outputs.
AACSB reports pull data only from specific system sections. For example:
- Degrees are maintained in the Profile form
- Teaching, Scholarship, and Grants are maintained in the Activity form
Check the table below to see which sections and data types populate each AACSB reporting table.
| Data Type | 2020 Standards |
||
|---|---|---|---|
|
Active Section The following four sections populate the AACSB report. Degrees is on the Profile Form while Teaching, Scholarship, and Grants are on the Activity Form. |
Table 3.1 | Table 3.2 | Table 8.1 |
| Degrees | YES |
NO |
NO |
| Teaching | YES |
YES |
NO |
| Scholarship | NO |
NO |
YES |
| Grants | NO |
NO |
YES |
|
Activity Classification The following three default activity classifications populate the AACSB report. The Competitive Research Award AC is linked to the Grants section while Scholarly Type and Intellectual Contributions Review Type are linked to the Scholarly Contributions section. You can set these at the Business School unit so that only the business faculty see them. |
Table 3.1 | Table 3.2 | Table 8.1 |
| AACSB: Competitive Research Award | NO |
NO |
YES |
| AACSB: Scholarly Type | NO |
NO |
YES |
|
AACSB: Intellectual Contributions Review Type Former Digital Measures (DM) UsersDigital Measures has a field labeled Was this peer-reviewed/refereed? with Yes or No options. Business school administrators (Dean/Associate Dean) will need to determine which value in FAR to map this to (either "Blind Peer Reviewed," or "Non-blind Peer Reviewed"). In this case, please follow these rules:
|
NO |
NO |
YES |
|
Faculty Classification The following eight faculty classifications populate the AACSB report |
Table 3.1 | Table 3.2 | Table 8.1 |
| AACSB: Basis for Qualification | YES |
NO |
NO |
| AACSB: Faculty Qualification Group | YES |
YES |
NO |
| AACSB: Faculty Sufficiency | YES |
YES |
NO |
| AACSB: Percent Time Devoted to Mission | YES |
NO |
NO |
| AACSB: Professional Responsibilities | YES |
NO |
NO |
| AACSB: Faculty FTE | NO |
NO |
YES |
| AACSB: Discipline | YES |
NO |
YES |
| AACSB: Specialty | YES |
NO |
NO |
Can I use custom sections or classifications for AACSB reporting?
No. AACSB reports only include data entered using the default Sections, Activity Classifications (ACs), and Faculty Classifications (FCs) provided in FAR. Custom sections or classifications will not be included in report outputs.