The Academy of the State Customs Committee of the Republic of Azerbaijan (ASCCA), which is shortly referred to as the Azerbaijan Customs Academy (ACA), was established through a Decree of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan in 2012; started functioning in 2014; and successfully materialized its first-ever students graduation in the academic year 2017/2018. It is a special-purpose and accredited public higher education institution (HEI), operating under the State Customs Committee (SCC) of Azerbaijan. The institution's rector is appointed by the President of Azerbaijan.

Currently, the new ACA webpage and its English version are under construction, being planned to be launched in Fall 2020. Therefore, the brief description here aims to provide some preliminary info about the institution.
 
As presented below, the institution has several functions, incuding the adult learning, particularly for the Customs personnel. The ACA aims to benefit from the European adult learning partnerships in its services for its students and Azerbaijan's Customs officers, where relevant. Establishing cooperation and partnerships in the framework of the European adult learning and Erasmus+ programs constitute a key priority for the ACA, and the ACA aims to use the EPALE for that purpose.

As a public HEI accredited by the Ministry of Education of Azerbaijan, the institution carries out a number of higher education (BA and MA level) programs, to which the admissions are implemented by the State Examination Center of Azerbaijan. Currently, the institution implements the following academic degree programs:

• BA in Economics
• BA in Laws
• BA in Information Security
• BA in International Trade and Logistics
• MA in International Law
• MA in Customs Administration
• MA in Criminal Law

As the only national Customs training institute, it also implements additional education and training for the Customs staff e.g. regular professional training and continuous/adult/lifelong learning programs for the Customs officers, through its Lifelong Learning Department and Department for International Cooperation and Projects. The ACA professional Customs training and retraining types include: 

• Pre-service & in-service trainings
• On-the-job personnel (re-)trainings
• Executive/advanced professional development trainings;
• Internships; 
• Additional higher education
• Improvement of other qualification levels.

Crucially, the ACA also houses and represents two important international entities:

• World Customs Organization Regional Training Center (RTC) in Baku: the ACA Rector is the RTC Director.
• Regional Office of the International Network of Customs Univerities (INCU) headquartered in Australia: the ACA leads the Baku Regional Office and is the only focal point for the INCU matters.

To sum it up, the following reflects the ACA's special differences from almost all higher education institutions in Azerbaijan, with all its several and interrelated functions, as summed up below:

1) An accredited public higher education institution functioning as a university
2) An adult learning provider / the only national Customs training institute, which also has a specific Lifelong Learning Department
3) A research entity
4) WCO RTC in Baku
5) INCU Regional Office

Crucially, the ACA International Cooperation aims to deal with all the international and European relations and projects, across all those six dimensions, and in that spirit, the academy establishes mutually beneficial relations and partnerships with the most relevant higher education, training and research institutions across the world and in Europe. Partnerships in the framework of the EU/European education, training and research programs constitute a key priority of the ACA international cooperation agenda. In this regard, the aims to partner with relevant European partner institutions, particularly Erasmus+ higher education, adult learning and research project proposal development and grant applications.

For more information on the Academy and for cooperation and partnership proposals, you are welcome to contact the ACA International Cooperation Team.
As soon as the new website is launched, we will update our EPALE profile.