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At the request of the higher education institutions can the Accreditation Council can approve the specific composition of the bundle before the application is submitted (§ 30 para. 2 MRVO). There is therefore no obligation, but pre-approval is recommended, especially for large and/or subject-specific disparate bundle plans. However, if a bundle is immediately apparent, this step should be dispensed with.
It should be noted that the bundling provisions in the MRVO have been partially tightened compared to the old law. The specimen decree (Section 30) stipulates that the peer review report in accordance with Section 24 (4) may cover several study programmes if they have a high degree of subject proximity that goes beyond mere affiliation to a subject area (humanities and cultural studies, social sciences or natural sciences) (cluster accreditation).
The academic criteria according to Part 3 must be examined separately for each study programme. A bundle should not consist of more than ten study programmes (§ 30 para. 1, sentence 2 MRVO). Common structural features of several study programmes alone do not constitute subject-related proximity.
The Accreditation Council approves exceeding the target upper limit, especially if a few subjects in the planned bundle are distributed across several study programmes (e.g. Bachelor’s, Master’s, partial study programmes in different teacher training courses) – the decisive factor is subject proximity.
Applications for bundle permits can be submitted online in the electronic application processing system ELIAS electronic application processing system. An application for approval of a bundle should contain the following information:
The larger the bundle, the more detailed the justification from the higher education institutions should be. Applications without or with insufficient justification will be rejected. A statement about the intended size and composition of the review group is also desirable, as the “quality of the review” must be maintained (see below).
Attention: On the procedure for preparing an application for bundle composition and deadline extension in the course of preparing a bundling procedure s. FAQ 04.5.
You should allow some time for the application to be approved.
In concrete terms, this means that following receipt and a brief review, the Head Office asks members of the Accreditation Council who are close to the subject in question for an assessment. This forms the basis of the Board’s final decision. The higher education institutions are informed of this immediately by a letter from the Chairperson via ELIAS.
§ Section 25 (1) MRVO regulates the minimum size of the peer review panel and its composition for program accreditation. This means that in the case of complex accreditation procedures – such as cluster accreditations – larger expert panels are possible, whereby the proportion of the groups represented must be maintained. (see § 25 para. 1 MRVO including justification).
In its resolution “Size of peer review panels in bundled procedures” of 21.03.2019, the Accreditation Council states, with reference to the proven practice from the old Accreditation system, that in justified cases a proportional increase in the number of peer reviewers to be appointed can be waived.
The Accreditation Council does not question deviations that are comprehensibly justified and documented in the accreditation report in the aforementioned sense.
It is not one of the Accreditation Council’s tasks to approve the composition of the peer review panel in advance. The composition is the responsibility of the evaluating Agencies, which are bound by the guidelines of the HRK (cf. explanatory memorandum to § 25 para. 4 MRVO).
If bundled applications contain information on the intended size and composition of the peer review panel, applicants are informed that, in the event of an obviously inadequate composition of a peer review panel, care must be taken to ensure that all subjects and sub-disciplines are adequately considered in the peer review panel.
Should the Accreditation Council subsequently find fault with a procedure as a result of an evidently inappropriate composition of the peer review panel, the applicant is given the opportunity to rectify the situation, for example through a follow-up assessment by an additional expert.
The previous admissibility of school-form-specific bundling has been abolished; in future, subject proximity will be the primary criterion for bundling.
In terms of the integration of subject-specific sciences, subject-specific didactics and educational science, this is to be welcomed. In any case, accreditation practice has developed in such a way that individual subjects are assessed across all types of school, possibly also including the non-teaching degree program of a subject.
In some teacher training subjects, subject content in the narrower sense plays a quantitatively less important role. In such cases, structural features may also play a greater role in bundling. This must also be justified in detail.