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INTRODUCTION The Major Field Test in Business (MFTB) is sponsored by Higher Education Assessment of the Educational Testing Service (ETS) and covers foundation course content taught in a typical undergraduate business program. The MFTB multiple-choice questions cover topics in eight areas: accounting, economics, management, quantitative business analysis and information systems, finance, marketing, legal and social environment, and international issues. The ETS reports (Judy Bennett, personal communication, August 17, 2007) that 143,349 seniors at 553 different schools have taken the MFTB from 2003 to 2006. ETS (2000) does not claim that its sample proportionally represents the various types of higher education institutions. Approximately thirty percent of the participating schools are accredited by AACSB International--The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Approximately thirty-five percent of all U.S. AACSB accredited schools use the MFTB. Rotondo (2005) presents a thorough summary of advantages and disadvantages of the use of the MFTB for assessment. At our university, the MFTB has been used as an assessment tool in the fall and spring semesters since 1998. The MFTB is included for assessment purposes since it offers the opportunity for the comparison of the student performance at the university with students at other universities, as well as, the comparison of our students over time. Other assessment methods are used to measure specific learning goals. Assessment can be performance based (Does the student meet program standards?) or value-added based (Has the student gained knowledge?). Value-added assessment demonstrates the improvement in learning due to the student's program of study and generally utilizes a pre/post design to measure the change in student learning. This study focuses on the change in MFTB scores for students who took the exam as sophomores and then again as seniors. Thus, this is a matched-pair value-added study based on 68 students. In the fall of 2000, as an additional form of assessment of the business program, we began administering the MFTB to a small sample of sophomores. Several references cited below indicate there are factors other than curriculum such as student ability, experience, gender, etc. which affect MFTB scores. We observed a few sophomores (who had not completed the business curriculum) scoring better than some seniors (who had completed the business curriculum). To reduce the influence of individual student characteristics and help isolate the impact of the curriculum on the test performance, we matched the senior score with the sophomore score for each student to create a change in score variable (matched-pair or dependent sample design). The intent was to measure the MFTB score improvement for each student and attribute the score improvement to the curriculum. By looking at the change in score for each student, we reduce the impact of student variability and are better able to isolate the impact of the curriculum. Of course, we expected student scores to improve reflecting the value-added nature of our business curriculum. We further expected the performance improvement to be related to business program performance as measured by business course grades. LITERATURE REVIEW There are numerous examples in the literature of business schools using the MFTB for assessment purposes. Several studies look at possible factors affecting MFTB performance, such as grade point average (GPA), specific course grade point average, SAT scores, age, gender, race, and student major. Bycio and Allen (2007) find significant correlations between MFTB scores and business GPA, university GPA, SAT-Verbal, SAT-Math, and student motivation. Bagamery, Lasik, and Nixon (2005) report gender, whether the student took the SAT, and grades as significant predictors of MFTB performance. Wathen and Nale (2003) report relatively high correlations between MFTB performance and courses in accounting, statistics, macroeconomics, finance, business law, operations, and strategy. …
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