Dean Data

Posted by Joseph Phillips, Jr. on Thursday, March 1, 2012 at 9:51 AM PST

Are you curious about the characteristics of business school deans??  AACSB International, our accrediting body, just released the results of its survey of deans.  The survey is based on 500 responses from deans around the world, 330 from the US. You might be interested to know what they found and how this dean stacks up.

Seventy-two percent of those surveyed were in their first deanship - so am I.

Only 18% of deans are women - I am not helping with that.

Among those in their first deanship, 24% were associate deans prior to becoming a dean and 23% were department chairs - I was an associate dean.  In case you are curious, about 8% were in industry before joining academe as a dean - that does not happen often and it is frequently not successful (but I can think of some exceptions). 

Among all deans, which would include those who were a dean somewhere else first, 19% arrived after serving as a dean elsewhere, 19% came after serving as associate deans, and 14% were previously a department chair.

The average dean has served 4.6 years.  In case you are concerned that people like me pull up the average, the median is 3.3 years.  I am in my eleventh year, so people are starting to wonder about that.

Sixty-three percent of deans were at the same institution prior to becoming dean.  Not me, I came to SU from Creighton.

Management is the top disciplinary area for deans, with 14.2 % having their degrees in management.  Economics used to be the most common discipline for deans, but is now at 13.5%.  I am an economist.

Among current deans, 33% were not actively looking to be a dean, but responded to an invitation to apply.  Twenty-five percent were actively looking and were either nominated or applied on their own.  I was not actively looking and Greg Prussia called me - so the rest is history and you can blame him! :}