FIBAA

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FIBAA - Mission Statement

“FIBAA audits and promotes public and private educational organizations and establishes transparency in the education market. FIBAA sees itself as an international quality and accreditation agency, active primarily in Europe, which supports universities in the development of economic science oriented study programs and quality assurance systems.”

FIBAA - International Agency for the Quality Assurance and Accreditation of Programs and Higher Education Institutions

The FIBAA (Foundation for International Business Administration Accreditation) is a Swiss non-profit agency for quality assurance with operative branches in Bonn (Germany) and Zurich (Switzerland). FIBAA audits, assesses and furthers private and state-approved higher education institutions and thus enhances transparency in the educational sector.

Since 2002 FIBAA has been bestowing the seal of the German Accreditation Council for academic programs. In February 2007 this entitlement was extended by the German Accreditation Council for another five years. At the same time its scope was extended to programs in the field of law and social science.

In the Netherlands FIBAA has been acknowledged as accreditation agency by the Nederlands-Vlamse Accreditatie Organisatie (NVAO).

Both national quality seals can be complimented by the internationally acknowledged FIBAA quality seal, which is offered for programs conducted outside Germany.

Though the main business area of the FIBAA is the program accreditation of courses of study requiring compulsory attendance and correspondence courses, FIBAA will also offer systems accreditation for universities, business schools or economics-oriented institutes as from autumn 2008. As far as quality assurance for corporate universities is concerned, FIBAA has developed an own procedure. For the development of quality-assurance systems FIBAA can utilize its long-standing management and university expertise.

Structural Built Up

Accreditation is one of the key words on the way to a joint European sector of higher education. FIBAA places its work in the service of this process initiated by the Bologna Conference and the follow up conferences of the competent ministries. FIBAA adheres to the governmental requirements in Germany-Austria-Switzerland. Next to this, also guidelines consolidated in the European framework receive due attention. Since FIBAA was founded, the co-operation in supranational institutions as well as the practical application of jointly developed benchmarks are key elements of its philosophy and business practice. Transparent quality criteria -- the basis of the accreditation processes -- reflect both the status quo of science and the standards and requisites of the vocational field. Because of this the quantitative involvement of the higher education and business sectors, of scientists and corporate representatives (amongst other relevant groups in the bodies of the FIBBA) is a must.

Objectives

FiBAA is an international accreditation agency mainly active in Europe. It aids higher education institutions in the further development of their bachelor-, master-, and PhD programmes. This is achieved through an intensive accreditation process involving the higher education institution. On the one hand this process aims at quality improvement, on the other it aims at the accreditation of the programme. This quality process comprises the consultation to quality management, the appraisal of the program concerning its structure and contents as well as the fulfillment of the requirements which are needed in order to bestow the FIBAA-quality seal.

FIBAA is bound to the following objectives:

1. Assurance and improvement of the quality of programmes
2. Assistance in the development of a varied range of courses
3. Making the programmes on offer more transparent for the labour market, the students, businesses, and the higher education institutions themselves
4. Co-operation in the development of the basis for the quality process in the national as well as international framework
5. Consideration of European concepts and guidelines in the accreditation process
6. Application of a combination of information-quality standard and process principle for our clients and consultants.
The accreditation procedure aims at the following:
- verifying that the objectives of the programme are feasible
- certifying that the program can be studied
- auditing and assessing the current status quo of the scientific bases
- appraising the value of the program for the vocational field
- assessing the position of the modularised programme in the European, national or regional higher education framework.

Method of Accreditation

„Peer review“. Generally teams consist of at least four people, two of whom are from the academic sphere (university context or “Fachhochschule”, i.e. university for applied sciences), one from industry (representative of a company) and a student team-member.
Basis for the peer assessment are “Questions Concerning Self-Documentation”, which have been structured systematically according to the following criteria: concept ional bases and objectives of the programme, positioning of the programme in science and the vocational field, faculty, contents of the programme and how they are taught, the student-development process from enrolment to graduation, and, finally, resources and management. All in all this amounts to about a hundred quality criteria. They are the basis of the higher education institutions self-documentation.
Teams of consultants draw up the final appraisal of the programme by working out a quality profile. For this process definitions of minimum requirements as well as a top benchmark are available for the individual quality criteria. Minimum requirement and benchmark are constantly scrutinised by science and industry. The consultants determine the individual quality criteria in their relevance according to the type of higher education institution and type of programme.
On the basis of the final report by the consultants the FIBAA accreditation commission decides about the accreditation, conditional accreditation, or denial.

Quality Assurance

Looking at the reform of higher education and the amendments to the Higher Education Framework Act it becomes evident that higher education institutions will have to take the academic reform into their own hands as they are subject to competition and transparency of academic achievement.

Introducing bachelor- and master programs, the legislator went one brave step forward in 1998/99. Central element of the bachelor- and master programs will be the quality assurance. We as well as the higher education institutions supporting us, businesses and the central associations, are off the opinion, that the foundation of the “Accreditation Council at the German Rectors Conference” (German Universities Association) laid the basis for the realization of the new Higher Education Act. For the first time in its history the German higher education system approximates the internationally customary processes and standards. With this higher education institutions have to take care of the needed quality assurance and comparability of the learning opportunities they offer. Naturally, evaluation concepts will have to be developed and introduced for this process.

For a higher education institutions in the German-speaking world accreditation may be new territory. Abroad, however, extensive expert knowledge has been collected in this field for a long time. In the sector of business schools and their course offers for bachelor- and master programs numerous accreditation facilities, which – approaching the subject applying various systems – verify the quality of the schools or rather study offers. The whole array of quality assuring organizations abroad reaches from
AACSB in the USA for example, to AEEDE in Spain, to the English quality assurers AMBA and ABS, the CHAPITRE from France to the foundations in Central and Eastern Europe like RABE, CEEMAM and FORUM. Also for Germany, Austria, and Szwitzerland a tri-national organization, which is close to industry and geared to the international market, the STIFTUNG DER WIRTSCHAFT FÜR QUALITÄTSSICHERUNG IM MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT (FIBAA) has been active in the field of higher education accreditation since 1994. Its aim is to care for the quality assurance of management qualification. The instruments of the FIBAA are information, consultancy, audit and assessment of MBA- and BBA programs on the basis of minimum standards, which reflect the requirements of industry. By this transparency shall be created in a market, which is becoming visibly more blurred and where manifold study offers cannot be purposefully singled out.