During FIBAA (re-)accreditation, the Master of Business Administration (MBA) met and on many criteria actually exceeded the standards laid down for a master’s degree.

The auditors highlighted the following strengths of the SteinbeisMBA: 

• The positioning of the degree within the education and employment market
• Partnerships with business
• The recruitment procedure
• The blending of theory and practice
• The focus on developing skills and qualifying people to carry out their work
• The teaching of management models

• The underlying logic and understandable way teaching is carried out
• The use of case studies and live examples
• The way participants are empowered to pursue their profession
• The on-the-job experience of teaching staff
• The supervision of students by teaching staff

As with the other programs, the SteinbeisMBA uses methods based on the “Project Competence Degree” (PCD). The auditors’ opinion of this “unique selling proposition” – which “rigorously [combines] theoretical and practical aspects within one degree” – was that it is a “highly suitable [method] to improve understanding and motivate students”.

Basing their studies on projects that transfer theory into business allows students to “acquire strong professional skills, qualifying [students] for greater management responsibilities”. Summarising its findings, the FIBAA said that the SteinbeisMBA “is systematically geared to the demands of the employment market” and that it is hardly surprising that graduates find it easy to find work.

The auditors underscored the “particularly rigorous approach to developing skills [on the degree], which a test developed by a lecturer of the university monitors regularly with the students”.

According to the auditors, the teaching and application of management models, which is core to the curriculum, along with the PCD approach, is above average.

The wealth of experience of lecturers, who, as defined by the rules, are still active in business in parallel to their work for the university, was greeted by the auditors and considered above average.

The supervision of students is carried out “with commitment, matched to individual requirements”; feedback from students reflects “all-round satisfaction”.

The SteinbeisMBA was created by combining the compulsory attendance MBA programs offered by a variety of SBH faculties and departments. The emphasis of these programs is now reflected in compulsory electives. The FIBAA auditors described this development as positive: offering future MBA programs at SHB “under one roof” will bolster the standing and image of SHB. “The positioning of the in-depth electives already assessed during the first accreditation was credibly and in some respects particularly impressively confirmed by the university with the statistics [they] provided”.