Excelia through the years
Excelia has been awarded the EESPIG label by the Ministry of Higher Education, Research, and Innovation, which recognises Excelia’s mission as a not-for-profit establishment contributing to the public service of higher education and research.
It has an international reputation and comprises a business school with triple accreditation (AASCB, EQUIS, AMBA), a tourism school, a digital communication school, and a language school.
It welcomes some 6,500 students across its 4 campuses.
Originally established in 1988 by La Rochelle Chamber of Commerce and Industry, in 2020 Excelia took over ESCEM, a management school that had been created in 1998 through the merger of Sup de Co Poitiers and Sup de Co Tours.
Excelia now boasts a network of 45,000 Alumni, the first of whom graduated in 1964!
Excelia has always been a pioneer in its sphere of activity. By becoming an educational centre encompassing 5 multi-disciplinary and multi-campus Schools, it has developed a new model designed to respond to students' professional ambitions as well as to the significant demands from companies in terms of the skills and competencies required for current and for future jobs.
Today, the Group comprises a management school ‘Excelia Business School’, which is AACSB, EPAS, EQUIS and AMBA accredited, a school of tourism ‘Excelia Tourism School’, which is TedQual accredited, a digital school ‘Excelia Communication School’ and finally ‘Excelia Executive Education’, a school offering executive education.
Experiential learning at the heart of our model
All the programmes we offer have been developed around three main principles: academic teaching, experience in the field (in France and abroad), and personal development (general knowledge, self-awareness and career projection). Through company-based internships and projects, in addition to a variety of humanitarian, social or civic experiences, we enable our students to ‘see’ and ‘experience’ the realities of the world around them… this is one of the main differentiating features of Excelia.
Pedagogical innovation as a driving force
Our pedagogical objective is to train students to become future managers capable of instigating innovation and pioneering the transformation of companies. This is based on a 3-way approach encompassing creativity, management and technology. This principle filters down through all our programmes. It involves innovative, mobile learning methods and the digital transformation of courses. Through the synergy between our Schools, and the development of double degrees (both internally and through partnerships with other institutions), we aim to continue to develop a range of courses that promote the acquisition of complementary skills and competencies, preparing our students to become managers who are not only flexible, but have the ability to understand both existing and future jobs and careers.
Our international dimension
Since its creation, Excelia has always maintained an openness to the world, and this global approach and attitude have contributed to the Group’s sphere of influence. We currently have 1625 international students on campus and our objective is to see this number continue to increase. The Group has a network of several offices abroad (China, the West Indies/ Americas, Cameroon, Morocco, Europa, Ivory Coast and India) whose mission is not only to promote our Schools and our education courses and programmes, but also to recruit international students. In addition, they contribute to further developing our networks with French or foreign companies and with our Alumni, so as to help students secure internships and jobs. Our goal is also to increase the number of international lecturers and to make programmes more widely available in English.
