Developing
business leaders

AACSB

The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business is the world’s largest business education network connecting students, academia, and business to advance business education worldwide.

Founded in 1916, AACSB is a global non-profit association of more than 1,500 member organizations in over 90 countries and territories, with headquarters in North America, Asia Pacific, and Europe. With more than 760 business schools accredited worldwide, AACSB ensures the highest quality standard in business education to prepare the next generation of business leaders.

What does AACSB accreditation mean?

AACSB accreditation represents a business school's ongoing commitment to quality improvement and the promise to deliver the skills and abilities critical to the success of global business. In addition, it assures stakeholders that schools:

• Manage resources to achieve a vibrant and relevant mission
• Advance business and management knowledge through faculty scholarship
• Provide high-calibre quality teaching and curricula
• Cultivate meaningful interaction between students and a qualified faculty
• Produce graduates who have achieved specified learning goals

EQUIS

The fundamental objective of EQUIS, linked to the mission of EFMD, is to raise the standard of management education worldwide.

• EQUIS assesses institutions as a whole. It assesses not just degree programmes but all the activities and sub-units of the institution, including research, e-learning units, executive education provision and community outreach. Institutions must be primarily devoted to management education.
• EQUIS is not primarily focused on a specific programme. Its scope covers all programmes offered by an institution from the first degree up to the PhD.
• EQUIS looks for a balance between high academic quality and the professional relevance provided by close interaction with the corporate world. A strong interface with the world of business is, therefore, as much a requirement as a strong research potential. EQUIS attaches particular importance to the creation of an effective learning environment that favours the development of students’ managerial and entrepreneurial skills, and fosters their sense of global responsibility. It also looks for innovation in all respects, including programme design and pedagogy.
• Institutions that are accredited by EQUIS must demonstrate not only high general quality in all dimensions of their activities, but also a high degree of internationalisation. With companies recruiting worldwide, with students choosing to get their education outside their home countries, and with schools building alliances across borders and continents, there is a rapidly growing need for them to be able to identify those institutions in other countries that deliver high quality education in international management.

To date, 167 schools have received EQUIS accreditation.

PRME

Launched at the 2007 UN Global Compact Leaders Summit in Geneva, the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) initiative is the largest organized relationship between the United Nations and business schools, with the PRME Secretariat housed in the UN Global Compact Office.

The mission of PRME is to transform management education, research and thought leadership globally by providing the Principles for Responsible Management Education framework, developing learning communities and promoting awareness about the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.

The Six Principles of PRME are inspired by internationally accepted values, such as the United Nations Global Compact's Ten Principles, and provide an engagement structure for academic institutions to advance social responsibility through incorporating universal values into curricula and research. They seek to establish a process of continuous improvement among institutions of management education in order to develop a new generation of business leaders capable of managing the complex challenges faced by business and society in the 21st century.

BTMAC

Accreditation by the Business Technology Management Accreditation Council (BTMAC) assures that programs meet national standards to produce graduates ready to enter Business Technology Management (BTM) related fields that are leading the way in innovation, competitiveness and emerging technologies.

CAFCE

Members of the Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning Canada (CEWIL Canada) first established criteria and a process for the accreditation of co-operative education programs (co-op) in 1979. Accreditation standards were developed to establish co-op as an educational strategy and to provide leadership in ensuring quality co-op programming.

Accreditation Council members from across Canada articulate and review accreditation measures as the needs of students, employers and institutions change. In order to qualify for accreditation, Co-op programs must demonstrate:

• Structural criteria
• Co-op in the institutional context
• Institutional commitment criteria
• Quality program delivery criteria
• Monitoring and evaluation criteria