ECBE

European Council for Business Education (ECBE)

Contact Information

Street name: Avenue Louise 65
Postal code and City: 1050 Brussels
Country: Belgium
Phone/Fax: +32 2 535 89 07
E-mail: Jan.vanherck@ecbe.eu
Website: https://www.ecbe.eu/
Contact person: Jan Vanherck
Function of contact person: Director of Finance and Administration
Founding year: The origins of ECBE date back to 1995, when an initiative was launched in Paris to establish an association devoted to quality in higher education in the field of economic and business studies and related fields. The European Council for Business Education was founded in Brussels on November 6th, 2004.
Legal status: ECBE, the European Council for Business Education, is an international nonprofit accreditation agency, registered in Brussels as an IVZW – a “Internationale Vereniging Zonder Winstoogmerk”.
International Links and membership: ECBE has been ENQA affiliate since June 2011.

ECBE, the European Council for Business Education, is an international non-profit accreditation agency, registered in Brussels as an AISBL – Association Internationale Sans But Lucrative. ECBE operates in compliance with Belgian legislation.

ECBE’s mission is to support higher and further education institutions and professional training organizations to develop outstanding, innovative programmes in business, management, and administration, which will help students to develop the skills, knowledge, and experience to succeed in today’s dynamic global economy. All types of academic and professional programmes are supported within the framework for a commitment to lifelong learning throughout Europe and in non-European countries.

The core activity of ECBE within the scope of the ESG is the evaluation and accreditation of the higher education study programmes in the field of economics, business, management, administration, and related fields.

Evaluation and accreditation of the study programmes is a procedure that aims to evaluate all aspects of the quality of the study programmes, including the programme structure, student support, delivery, teaching, assessment, learning outcomes, employability and employment of graduates, etc. and the accreditation decision. This procedure involves first evaluation and accreditation of the study programmes, as well as its re-accreditation (in both cases this is an ex-post procedure). Within the ECBE organisational structure, the general assembly – Annual General Meeting or AGM is the sovereign policy and decision-making body of ECBE. It is composed of all members of ECBE. After the AGM, the Board of Directors or BoD is the highest management decision-making body of ECB. It has seven members. The BoD assures quality in all working activities of ECBE and communicates all managerial decisions, measures, etc. to all other structural units of ECBE with the purpose of fostering their active participation in the quality system of continuous improvements. The Chairperson of the BoD, President of ECBE, is elected by the members of the BoD among themselves, and organizes the work of the BoD, chairs the meetings of the BoD, and convokes the AGM. Director of Finance and Administration (DoFA) takes care of the daily management of ECBE, while the Director of Accreditation (DoA) is the expert overviewing the quality assurance in the external quality assurance (provided by ECBE to members) and internal ECBE quality assurance. Board of the Commissioners or BoC is the only body that can take decisions about granting ECBE accreditation. It has four members. The BoC is independent, autonomous, and politically neutral. Their decisions respect the principles of ECBE, as written in the statutes, the byelaws, and the different official documents about accreditation and the accreditation process. The Pool of Reviewers (PoR) consists of senior reviewers, reviewers (academic reviewers and student reviewers) and consists of 20 reviewers (February 2020). The ECBE review teams for external reviews consist of the reviewers from ECBE PoR.