Quality assurance
Accreditation council evaluates bachelor and master programmes
Dieser Artikel in Deutsch
Under the roof of the national "Akkreditierungsrat" (Accreditation Council) an increasing number of evaluation agencies are concerned with quality assurance and accreditation of Bachelor and Master programmes in Germany. Part of these agencies (seven in March 2002) have specialized in certain fields, for example the engineering sciences, others have a more comprehensive focus. Every single evaluation committee consists of representatives of higher education institutions, students and professional practice (on behalf of both employer and employee organizations).
The committee judges every programme for its professional (minimum) demands, the supervision of the individual student and student's chances of finding a job after graduation. "Accreditation" by an official agency is, as a rule, a prerequisite for the approval of the Bachelor and Master degree programme by the Ministry of Education. Over a thousand Bachelor and Master degree programmes are already being offered by German institutions of higher education. Accreditation methods can not keep up with this explosion of new programmes: since 1999 only 80 institutions could be accredited, with a few negative evaluation results.
Until recently the responsible minister accredited programmes according to external criteria (hours of study required) set down in the exam regulations, without assurance of the internal quality of programmes. This was not sufficient for international benchmarking. The "Hochschulrektorenkonferenz" (Association of Universities and Other Higher Education Institution) and the Ministers of Education of the 16 German "Länder" (states) therefore founded the "Akkreditierungsrat" (AR). The AR is responsible for accrediting the individual agencies. International representatives are members of the AR. Goal of the AR is to coordinate its standards with those of the European Network for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (enqa) and the Joint Quality Initiative for Bachelor- and Master-Programmes, Germany's partners within European educational politics.
Hermann Horstkotte
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