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Alternative Procedures

Alternative Procedures are accreditation procedures developed and carried out by higher education institutions themselves. They represent an equivalent alternative to program and system accreditation and replace them completely.

In order for a higher education institution to be allowed to use an alternative procedure, it must first be accredited by the Accreditation Council. This accreditation gives the university the right to accredit its study programs independently.

Alternative procedures can be programme-related or system-related:

Programme-related Alternative Procedures are suitable for higher education institutions for which classic programme accreditation offers too little scope, but which do not want to or cannot meet all the requirements of system accreditation.
System-related Alternative Procedures are suitable for higher education institutions that want to go beyond the requirements of system accreditation in terms of quality assurance.

A central aim of the Alternative Procedures is to gain insights for the further development of the accreditation system in Germany. They are therefore designed as dialogical accreditation procedures: The higher education institution enters into a professional exchange with the Accreditation Council and the higher education public with its procedure. The following applies: The higher education institution is the expert for its own Alternative Procedures. The Accreditation Council and the higher education public learn from its implementation.