FAQ-Kategorie: 16 Criteria for accreditation

Dual study programmes are so-called study programmes with a special profile. According to § 12 para. 6 MRVO, study programmes with a special profile claim “have a self-contained study programme concept that adequately represents the special characteristics of the profile”. The “special characteristics” of the profile feature “dual” are described in the explanatory memorandum to Section 12 (6).   It states: “A study programme may be described and advertised as ‘dual’ if the learning locations (at least the college of cooperative education/vocational academy and the company) are systematically interlinked in terms of content, organization and contract”.

It is possible that the respective state higher education act provides specific regulations for dual studies.

On the basis of § 12 para. 6, the Accreditation Council expects the higher education institution to demonstrate in the accreditation procedure, based on evidence, how systematic content-related, organizational and contractual interlinking of the different learning venues is ensured within the framework of the specific study programme concept. The higher education institutions are responsible for the design of the interlinking in these three dimensions. The recommendations of the German Council of Science and Humanities from 2013 provide important information on the systematics of a dual study programme, especially in contrast to other formats.

The Accreditation Council has established that, in practice, the dimension of content dovetailing in particular leads to uncertainties and misunderstandings both on the part of the higher education institutions making the application and on the part of the accreditation agencies carrying out the assessment. Some fundamental considerations can be extracted from the Accreditation Council’s decisions to date:

• The Accreditation Council generally bases its assessment on the study programme and not on the complementary practical activity. This means that the content must necessarily be interlinked in the curriculum. A course-related training/professional activity in an area related to the content of the study programme does not sufficiently justify the profile feature “dual” even if parts of the professional activity are credited to the course without further transfer credits or parts of the course are credited to a training course.
• The content must be systematically interlinked. Selective points of contact with Professional Practice, for example in the context of an internship semester or the final thesis, do not justify the profile feature “dual”. In the opinion of the Accreditation Council, this also means that the curriculum of the dual variant of a study programme must differ from that of a complementary “conventional” full-time variant at least in terms of the specific requirements for students.
• The interlinking of content must be anchored in the course documents (e.g. module descriptions, study and examination regulations).
• It must be possible to demand binding interlinking of content from the practice institutions as part of the university’s quality control and quality assurance, for example via cooperation agreements.

Yes, this is possible under certain conditions. Here it is important to distinguish between the planning requirements for higher education institutions and individual courses of study. All relevant information on the question is contained in § 8 para. 2 MRVO , including the explanatory memorandum .

According to Section 8 (2) sentence 2 MRVO, “300 ECTS credit points are required for the Master’s degree, including the previous degree […]”. According to the explanatory memorandum, these are “planning requirements for higher education institutions” to which no exceptions are provided.

This means that no consecutive Bachelor’s/Master’s combinations are permitted at the same higher education institution that are not planned for 300 ECTS. For example, “3+1” or “4+2” are not permitted as consecutive study programmes.

In practice, this also means the following, for example: At higher education institutions for applied sciences (HAWs), it is sometimes the case that the same subject is offered as a six-semester Bachelor’s degree without an internship semester and as a seven-semester Bachelor’s degree with an internship semester. A subject-related four-semester Master’s degree at the same higher education institution is only consecutive to the six-semester Bachelor’s degree.

These planning specifications stem from a decades-long history of higher education policy debates surrounding keywords such as “standard period of study”, “lengthening/shortening the period of study”, etc., which is not the right place to discuss them here.

§ Section 8 (2) sentence 3 MRVO now reads: “This [the planning requirement of 300 ECTS] can be deviated from in individual cases if the students have the appropriate qualifications, even if 300 ECTS credit points are not achieved after completing a Master’s degree program.”

The explanatory statement continues: “However, this exception relates exclusively to the individual student and not to the study programme. Accordingly, applicants who do not reach a total of 300 ECTS credit points due to the number of ECTS credit points from their Bachelor’s degree can also be admitted to Master’s degree programs. The prerequisite is proof of the qualification required for admission.”

It follows from this:

• The admission of students who would achieve fewer than 300 credit points with their first degree is not necessarily a matter of compensating for missing credit points, but of providing individual proof of the qualifications required for admission. This means that it must be validated as part of the admission procedure that these candidates have the skills required for the chosen study program despite a shorter first degree. Detailed specifications as to how applicants’ qualifications are to be verified cannot be derived from the specimen decree. It is therefore up to the higher education institutions to develop suitable accreditation procedures. In addition to taking additional modules before or parallel to the Master’s degree course (“topping up to 300 ECTS”), numerous other options are also conceivable (e.g. taking an aptitude test, crediting professionally acquired skills).
• The Accreditation Council therefore generally does not accept proposed conditions that require students to “top up” to 300 ECTS.

These discussions already took place in the old accreditation law. It is still helpful to take a look at section 1.2 of the KMK Higher Education Committee’s interpretation of the common structural guidelines of the federal states.

Part-time study programmes are so-called study programmes with a special profile. According to § 12 para. 6 MRVO, study programmes with a special profile claim “have a self-contained study programme concept that adequately represents the special characteristics of the profile”. According to the explanatory memorandum to this paragraph, this means the following for the assessment: “If the higher education institution applies for or identifies a study programme with certain characteristics (e.g. […] part-time […]), these characteristics are part of the study programme profile and are therefore also subject to assessment. In these cases, the criteria mentioned in [§ 12] paragraphs 1 to 5 are to be applied depending on the specific profile from the respective specific perspective and measured against the special requirements to be defined by the higher education institutions in each case.”

The use of the profile feature “part-time” is associated with the claim that a study programme in its entirety can be reconciled in terms of time and organization with a parallel professional activity. Whether the part-time study programme should be compatible with full-time or part-time employment and how this requirement is implemented in detail is essentially at the discretion of the higher education institution. The Accreditation Council expects this to be reviewed in the assessment process in relation to the individual study programme concept.

The Accreditation Council’s previous decision-making practice has resulted in fundamental considerations:

• As the work volume of a full-time degree course is designed to be equivalent to the work volume of a full-time job, the Accreditation Council has set the dictum “no full-time alongside full-time”, which was already valid in the “old system”, as the only generally binding assessment standard.  
• This dictum can be taken into account in different ways:
  • A study programme advertised as “part-time” is often implemented as a structured part-time course. In some cases, this is only a structured version of a parallel full-time course.
  • If the higher education institution decides to offer a study programme advertised as part-time exclusively on a full-time basis or without a structured part-time option, it must be made clear to prospective students and students in a suitable form that full-time study is generally not compatible with parallel full-time employment. Ideally, the higher education institution will recommend how many hours per week working hours should be reduced in order to complete a degree within the standard period of study, or it will refer to the possibilities of individualized part-time study. Whether such recommendations are followed is at the discretion of the individual student. In the opinion of the Accreditation Council, an obligation of the higher education institution to ensure in individual cases that professional activity and / or the modules completed per semester as part of the degree course are reduced cannot be derived from the provisions of the interstate study accreditation treaty and the MRVO or the respective applicable state ordinance.
• The study organization and the didactic concept of the study programme must be tailored to the specific needs of the respective target group, for example through face-to-face teaching in the evening or at weekends, block teaching or e-learning elements. This means that Purely part-time study with an extended standard period of study does not sufficiently justify the profile feature “part-time”.
• The Accreditation Council expects that the workload, especially of the attendance phases, is made transparent to applicants and students in a suitable form.

External quality assurance of studies and teaching has always been based on the principle that responsibility for the quality and quality development of study programmes lies with the higher education institutions themselves. This dictum can be found in a prominent position both in the interstate study accreditation treaty (Art. 1 Para. 1) and in the European Standards and Guidelines as the European reference framework (ESG 2.1).

For the specific program accreditation procedure as well as the internal study program accreditation within the framework of system accreditation, this means that the determination of the quality of the content of studies and teaching in individual cases primarily results from quality objectives defined by the higher education institution itself. Or even more specifically: The higher education institution defines qualification goals for each study programme and is measured against their implementation.

The qualification goals are thus an essential basis for the overall assessment of subject content and are therefore of central relevance.
The extent to which the qualification goals are implemented curricularly (i.e. at the module level) is another core question of accreditation, which, however, must be analytically distinguished in the presentation from the assessment of the overall qualification goals aimed for in a study programme.

§ Section 11 (1) and (2) MRVO specifies the criteria according to which the coherence of the qualification goals of the study programme concept is to be examined. In essence, it is laid down there:

• In addition to academic qualification, the ability to take on qualified employment, personal development and social relevance are also prominently anchored as further objectives of higher education as defined in the interstate study accreditation treaty.
• Based on the descriptors or competence dimensions of the “Qualifications Framework for German Higher Education Qualifications” (cf. explanatory memorandum to Section 11 (2) MRVO), the qualification goals define the “professional, scientific, artistic, methodological and personality-building requirements” for the study programme in summary form.

This is to be distinguished from § 12 para. 1 MRVO, which asks, among other things, how the qualification goals aimed for in the study programme as a whole are implemented curricularly (i.e. at module level).

The Accreditation Council derives a few basic considerations for the review of the qualification goals from the guidelines in accordance with § 11 para. 1 and 2:

a.) Level of detail

• The qualification goals relate to the specific study programme as a whole. In other words, the qualification goals describe the knowledge and skills that students will have acquired at the end of their studies, taking appropriate account of the social and personal context
• The qualification goals correspond to the desired degree level and are based on the descriptors of the Qualifications Framework for German Higher Education Qualifications.
• The qualification goals relate to the academic or artistic qualification aimed for with the study programme as well as to the qualification for qualified employment in the fields of activity described. They classify the study programme academically (e.g. with regard to the possibilities of further academic qualification) and professionally (e.g. with regard to the fulfillment of external requirements for regulated professions, inclusion of Professional Practice).

b.) Transparency / commitment

• The qualification goals defined by the higher education institutions are not only included in the self-evaluation report, but are also accessible to the general public in an appropriate form. However, it is not mandatory that the qualification goals are anchored in the examination regulations or the module handbook, but at least they are published on the website and / or the course flyer, for example.
• The content of the qualification goals defined by the higher education institutions is consistent between the various versions (e.g. self-evaluation report, examination regulations, module handbook). This means that it is legitimate not to use the “full text” of the qualification goals throughout, but the different versions must not contradict each other.
• The qualification goals can be found in the Diploma Supplement under section 4.2 “Program Learning Outcomes”.