DCU Business School has been awarded accreditation by the world's oldest and most prestigious global accrediting body for business schools. Endorsement by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International) is widely recognised as the hallmark of excellence in business education, and has been earned by less than five percent of the world's business schools including London Business School, Harvard Business School and Stanford Graduation School of Business. DCU is only the second Irish university to receive this validation, joining UCD's Smurfit Business School.
Achieving accreditation involves a process of rigorous internal review, engagement with an AACSB assigned mentor, and peer review. During the multi-year process, the school focuses on developing and implementing a plan to align with AACSB's accreditation standards. These standards require excellence in areas relating to strategic management and innovation; student, faculty and staff engagement; learning and teaching; and academic and professional engagement.
AACSB's international accreditation panel highly commended DCU Business School on its spirit of innovation and outstanding level of industry engagement,
"DCU Business School is innovative and distinctive. It has excellent engagement with industry as evidenced in research projects, industry-led or co-developed business internships and consulting projects for Irish and international companies. The school has a clear commitment to infusing an application-oriented, cutting-edge curricula throughout its programmes. There is internal and external validation of outcome measures. The very high employment levels for its students also speak to the relevance of its curriculum."
DCU Business School has over 3,000 students across 6 undergraduate and 15 postgraduate programmes, as well as a vibrant community of PhD scholars. Industry engagement informs the nature and content of these programmes and is at the heart of research collaborations through the Irish Centre for Cloud Computing and Commerce (IC4), the DCU Centre for Family Business and the DCU Leadership and Talent Institute.
On the international stage, DCU Business School academics have a strong track record of publishing research in top-tier international journals. It also delivers undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at Princess Nora Bint Abdulrahman University (PNU), which significantly changes the lives of students at this all-female university in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, enhancing their success and well-being.
Dr. Anne Sinnott, Dean of DCU Business School, welcomed the achievement of AACSB accreditation,
"DCU Business School is an engaged, innovative, internationally-focused school which prides itself on its excellent reputation for impacting on students, the academic community, industry and wider society. From the outset, our guiding voices have been those of industry and students, and as a result, we are distinctive for our deep and responsive industry engagement and our close concern with the success of our students. This accreditation by AACSB recognises these core values and is testament to the drive and ambition of our staff, students, alumni, industry partners and other stakeholders, and I wish to thank everyone who contributed to our accreditation process."
