The “Practitioner Faculty Ratio" is often used as a measure of the quality of faculty members. Do you know the difference between a “practitioner” and a “practicing faculty member?” Although this difference is very important for students, it is not often recognized. First, a practitioner is defined in dictionaries as “a person engaged in practice,” but this does not mean only that he does a job, so we will call him as an “expert (professional).” This mainly refers to those who are in professional businesses, such as lawyers, doctors, accountants, tax accountants, consultants, and analysts, among others.

Such a long-term practical experience as a professional is an indispensable factor in conducting case discussions, but the problem is that the actual experience in a specific area is too strong. On the other hand, purely academic research teachers (so-called scholars) who do not have practical experience have the advantage of being able to conduct universal and systematic discussions, but there is a problem when muddled incidents occur in business situations based on actual experiences and they have difficulty discussing such events.

Therefore, in order to clear this dilemma, “practitioners” are required to have an academic career (at least a master's degree) in addition to a career as a professional, and the faculties in business schools are classified in “AQ, Academic Qualification” and “PQ, Professional Qualification.” Moreover, a certain limit has been placed on the ratio of PQ according to the educational mission.