The Internationalization of the Curriculum

This note reviews the results of four surveys related to the efforts of the AACSB to internationalize the curriculum of the business schools. The first, a survey of the 1071 participants in the 30 workshop/seminars which have been organized by the AACSB, showed that the workshops have been very beneficial for the participants and effected the courses they teach. The second survey, of all AACSB member schools, showed that most of them plan to internationalize their curriculums by introducing an international dimension into the core courses. But this raises the question of whether the faculty members are trained or prepared to do this. The third survey found that only 64 out of 564 AACSB member schools have one or more exchange programs with foreign business schools, and that only about 125 professors go overseas each year under the aegis of these programs. Finally, a fourth survey, of the 53 largest doctoral programs, indicated that only 17% of the graduates of our doctoral programs study any international courses during their graduate (masters and doctoral) studies. Thus, the next generation of faculty members will have difficulty in introducing any international content into the courses they teach.© 1987 JIBS. Journal of International Business Studies (1987) 18, 83–90