31 August - 6 September 2000

Europe's finest business schools

THE European Foundation for Management Development, EFMD, has championed the issue of quality in management development for many years and has brought together key operators in Europe in several common quality initiatives in particular the European Quality Improvement System (EQUIS)

by a staff reporter

With companies recruiting in Europe and beyond, with students choosing to get their education outside their home countries, and with schools building partnerships across borders and continents, there is now a rapidly growing need for more information and for better market transparency.

Students and employers often know which institutions in their home country have a reputation for high quality - but they need some guidance as to which institutions meet the highest international standards in the wider European environment.

Building on the productive activities of EQUAL, and the collaborative project Socrates, EFMD created, in 1997, the European Quality Improvement System. EQUIS is an international system of strategic audit and accreditation designed by Europeans for the assessment of institutions in widely different national contexts. Although it is inspired by the particular needs of a European situation characterised by extreme cultural diversity, EQUIS is not limited to European problems in its scope.

The standards are those of effective education for international management and apply to schools in any cultural environment whether in Europe or outside Europe.

EQUIS will disseminate throughout Europe a shared vision of quality standards to be striven for and will offer institutions a flexible strategic development tool for international comparison and benchmarking. Quality benchmarks have improved the performance of business across the world: European management education institutions are now creating their own learning system.

For schools that choose the accreditation route, EQUIS will lead to the award of a European Quality Label. For others, the process can be used more flexibly as an audit tool to assess their performance and market position in the light of international standards. In all cases, it is designed to approach quality as an ongoing process in which schools benchmark each other's performance and open their doors to evaluation by peers and customers.

34 business schools have now been awarded the European Quality Label