Message of the President, September 13th, 2021

Dear friends and colleagues,  

Let me first wish all of you the very best with the start of the new academic year. It is certainly a challenge to organize teaching with the Corona threat all over. But most of your students are expecting a “normal” situation, and I’m sure you do whatever you can to realize this. This asks a huge amount of commitment and energy from all of you. We fully understand the importance, and that is exactly what put the ECBE Conference on a second priority level. I understand your concerns.

I feel very sorry, but I must inform you about a difficult decision the Board of Directors took some days ago.
Looking at the enrolments for the Conference and the Seminar, listening to some of you, and taking into account the very limited number of contributions that were announced by members, we decided that both the format (online or at site in Paris) and timing of the Conference, Seminar and AGM was not what you all expected. 
Consequently, we decided not to push through meetings which limited people were waiting for, and we drastically adjusted the timing and content.

For 2021, the Conference is cancelled. We keep the same meeting place (Paris) for the 2022 meeting. Hopefully, we will be able to organize it in the “old”, traditional way.
Legally, we are obliged to organize the yearly AGM, and we will run a short Seminar on the same day.
As such, I would like to invite you to the following events: 

• Annual General Meeting of ECBE on Saturday, October 23rd, 2021, at 4 pm CET;
• A Seminar on “Standards of Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area - EHEA: Commitment to Creating a Quality Culture in Business Education”, also on October 23rd, 2021 from 1 pm - 4 pm CET. 

Please find attached the necessary documentation. More information will soon be available for download from our website.

Please accept my apologies for the late message, but we waited a long time, hoping for a miracle.

Another information many of you are waiting for is the result of the ENQA accreditation.
Unfortunately, the decision has still not been made. We got another version of the report by the beginning of August, which we commented for the factual inaccuracies, and we are still waiting for the final report that would comply with ENQA standards. So, even here, things are going very slowly, and there is not much we can do to speed it up. We will keep you informed.

We will meet soon.
Keep safe and strong.

Kind regards,

Pavel Žufan
President

Brno, September 13th, 2021