Selecting the Right Peer Schools for AACSB Accreditation - A Data Mining Application

For a business school, the selection of its peer schools is an important component of its International Association for Management Education (AACSB) (re)accreditation process. A school typically compares itself with other institutions having similar structural and identity-based attributes. The identification of peer schools is critical and can have a significant impact on a business school´s accreditation efforts. For many schools the selection of comparable peer schools is a judgmental process. This study offers an alternative means for selection; a quantitative technique called Kohonen´s self-organizing map (SOM) network for clustering. SOM as a software agent uses visualization to present information to the school in choosing its peer schools.