The European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) administers EQUIS, the international accreditation system for business schools. Accreditation is granted for five years at a time.
BI Norwegian School of Management was the first Norwegian school to achieve this quality award, and has recently been through a strict international assessment with a view to being accredited for another five-year period. Following the review by an international expert committee, EFMD renewed BI’s accreditation on 27 April 2010. The decision was unambiguous: BI Norwegian School of Management upholds the required standard for approval by a good margin.
“We have improved the quality of our master programmes, extended our portfolio of executive programmes and strengthened our international collaboration on research and education. These efforts are now being recognised,” says Tom Colbjørnsen, president of BI Norwegian School of Management. “This is a boost to carry on our work.”
“In my second period as president of the school, we will work hard to lift BI to an even higher international level. Our long-term goal is to secure a place among the 20 top schools on the Financial Times‘ list. We will focus on becoming an even more clear-cut business school and ensure our activities do not become too diversified. As opposed to most other Norwegian University Colleges we have no desire to attain university status, our goal is to remain a scientific business school and deliver the quality and competence needed by the business community. We will continue to strengthen our professional resources, and our programme portfolio will focus on economics, marketing, strategy, administration and management. Being relevant to the business world remains a key goal,” concludes Tom Colbjørnsen.
EQUIS is an international scheme to oversee quality assurance, improvement and accreditation for educational institutions in the field of economics and administration, with the purpose of raising the standards of these types of education. A school is accredited when it can document satisfactory compliance with 152 quality indicators.