Audits and international accreditations

Haaga-Helia is obliged by the national UAS Act to regularly go through an external audit. Haaga-Helia was successfully audited for the third time in spring 2023.

Audit was arranged by The Finnish Education Evaluation Centre FINEEC and the audit team was international. The quality label is valid for six years (until 2029). FINEEC report and the related audit manual.

Haaga-Helia was one of the first two institutions to receive the quality label of a Elite athlete friendly university (Huippu-urheilijamyönteinen korkeakoulu). The audit has been developed by the Finnish Olympic Committee and sport academies. The aim is to improve the conditions for athletes to complete higher education studies in alignment with their development and aims in sports. The dual careers of athletes are developed in cooperation with a sports academy. In Haaga-Helia, we work together with Urhea sports academy.  

Haaga-Helia provided the self-assessment report (only in Finnish) to the audit team and organised the audit visit in May 2023. The results were published in September 2023.

EFMD Programme accredited

International Business BBA achieved prestigious EFMD Programme  accreditation in 2025. It is the first programme in the Helsinki metropolitan area to receive EFMD’s programme-level accreditation. Haaga-Helia has been a member of EFMD (the European Foundation for Management Development) since 2012.  EFMD was founded in 1972 and now has nearly 1000 members from 92 countries.  It is one of the most respected accreditation organisations in the fields of business and management, offering both institutional and programme-level accreditations.

The International Centre of Excellence in Tourism and Hospitality Education (THE-ICE) was established in 2004 in Australia. THE-ICE has developed into a global organisation for accreditation, benchmarking, and quality enhancement in tourism, hospitality, events and culinary arts (TH&E) education.

Haaga-Helia’s Degree programme in Hospitality, Tourism and Experience Management received THE-ICE Committed to Quality (C2Q) certificate in 2021 and became the first Finnish accredited member of THE-ICE.

The International Council for Coaching Excellence (ICCE) awarded the Degree Programme in Sports Coaching and Management (SPOCMA) an internationally unique quality endorsement in 2021. Haaga-Helia is the first to receive the Full Endorsement in Europe and the second in the world. Degree Programme received an excellent 85% success rate in the evaluation.

UlysseusAI is the first joint European Master’s degree coordinated by a Finnish university of applied sciences. The Master’s level (EQF7) programme AI for Business Transformation was built with our Ulysseus partners. The quality assurance of the preparation and implementation of the curriculum is guided by the The European Approach process, which also includes the programme's international accreditation. The accreditation was arranged by AQAS and successfully completed in the autumn 2024.

In February 2011, Haaga-Helia was accepted as a member of AACSB (the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business). Our aim is to develop our quality work to reach the AACSB requirements in the future. 

AACSB was founded in the United States in 1916 and has more than 500 members in 30 countries.