The interstate study accreditation treaty (Art. 3 para. 1 sentence 2) names “the quality assurance and quality development of individual study programmes” as the subject of program accreditation. According to § 22 para. 4 sentence 1 MRVO, the Accreditation Council awards “the study programme” its seal during program accreditation. The subject of accreditation in program accreditation is therefore the study programme. The MRVO only makes additional statements on combined study programmes; see FAQ 10.
FAQ-Kategorie: 15 The study programme as a subject of accreditation
Accreditation does not specify the definition of study programmes. As a rule, the state higher education acts contain corresponding provisions. A typical formulation, here from § 30 of the Baden-Württemberg State Higher Education Act (as of the beginning of 2020), reads: “A study programme is a course of study regulated by study and examination regulations and aimed at a specific degree …”. Similarly in Section 60 of the North Rhine-Westphalian Higher Education Act: “Study programmes within the meaning of this Law are regulated by examination regulations”.
If the respective Higher Education Act contains such or similar wording, this means that the definition of the study programme is the responsibility of the higher education institution and that the examination regulations are the relevant place for this definition. In study programmes leading to regulated professions, external specifications are also common.
In practice, there are numerous constellations in which a major can be studied with one or more integrated minor subjects without these being partial study programmes. The distinction between such models and a combined study programme is not always obvious at first glance, especially as identical terms are often used:
- In a two-subject Bachelor’s degree (combined study programme) at Faculties of Philosophy, the term major and minor is often used, e.g. Ethnology major, History minor.
- In natural science study programmes, students usually have to choose minor subjects, e.g. physics (not a combined study programme) with a minor in computer science.
This leads to the question of whether, in the latter model, the minor subject can/must be assessed analogously to a partial study programme with a certain degree of independence and whether the assessment of the minor subject complements the accreditation of the major subject (answer: no and no).
The starting point for the distinction between a major/minor model and a combined study programme is § 32 para. 1 and § 32 para. 2 MRVO (justification). This states:
“If students choose individual subjects from a larger number of permissible subjects for their studies, each of these subjects is a partial study programme as part of a combined study programme.”
And:
“The higher education institution must have a coherent concept for the entirety of the combined study programme that integrates the qualification goals of the partial study programmes”.
It is therefore necessary to check in each individual case what the respective study/examination regulations define as a study programme:
- If the study programme is not defined as a specific subject, but as a combination of several partial study programmes, it is a combined study programme whose accreditation is supplemented by the partial study programmes. In the example above: Students are enrolled on the “two-subject Bachelor’s” study program and choose from a catalog of subjects at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, which can generally be combined relatively freely.
- If the study programme is defined as a specific subject with an integrated minor subject (e.g. Bachelor’s degree in Physics with the possible minor subjects a, b, c), it is not a combined study programme within the meaning of § 32 MRVO; the minor subjects are therefore not partial study programmes. In this case, the integrated minor subjects are to be treated and evaluated as part of the major subject in the accreditation process.
Study programs are often offered in different forms – as a basic course, as a dual course, as a part-time course, as a part-time course, as an English-language course, etc. etc. Or, based on a subject-specific core, there are often options for different specializations or concentrations.
Unless otherwise stipulated by state legislation, higher education institutions are free to decide for accreditation purposes whether these forms or specializations are offered as independent study programmes or as variants within the same study programme.
It should be noted that the object of assessment and thus the subject of accreditation is always the entire study programme. The possibility of excluding individual variants, i.e. study forms, specializations or majors, within a study programme from accreditation does not exist in the new Accreditation system.
The question of whether different specializations can be offered within a study programme, which lead to different degree designations (e.g. B.A. and B.Sc.), was already answered positively in the old Accreditation system, cf. http://archiv. akkreditierungsrat.de/fileadmin/Seiteninhalte/AR/Sonstige/AR_Rundschreiben_Abschlussbezeichnungen2.pdf
It is of paramount importance to the Accreditation Council that the subject of accreditation is clearly stated in the accreditation report. This may sound trivial, but in practice it is sometimes not. It is strongly recommended that the subject of accreditation is clarified at the latest at the beginning of the assessment process, ideally during the award of the contract to an Agencies or when the contract is concluded. FAQ 15.2 shows that the examination regulations are generally the only relevant place in which study programmes are described. In contrast, websites, final documents etc. are only relevant for accreditation insofar as deviations from the specifications in the examination regulations do not occur or should be corrected quickly.
The following examples serve to illustrate which procedures the Accreditation Council has already encountered and what the correct procedure is in each case.
(1) A department of a higher education institution applied for the accreditation of four study programmes in a bundle in ELIAS. However, the attached accreditation report included eight study programs, as the programs were offered with and without practical semesters and the Agencies considered these to be different study programmes. Dual “variants” were mentioned in passing. However, a look by the Accreditation Council at the joint examination regulations made it clear that these
- the four basic study programmes,
- these four programs including an additional internship semester and
- Four dual courses based on the specialist cores
were each defined as independent study programmes. – As the department wanted to reaccredit its entire offering, the only correct solution would have been for the agency/peer review panel to assess the twelve study programs and for reaccreditation applications to be submitted accordingly for all twelve programs.
(2) An Agencies accepted an assignment from a higher education institution to assess a study programme, but without the part-time option identified as a variant in the examination regulations. – This is not correct. The entire study programme is always the subject of accreditation; parts of it cannot be accredited separately. Higher education institutions and Agencies should only have agreed on the assessment of the entire study program including the part-time option.