Accreditation and quality assurance in German higher education

Accreditation is the procedure that checks whether a degree programme or a university's quality management meets certain standards. It protects students from programmes that do not deliver what they promise, creates comparability in the European Higher Education Area and in most German states is a precondition for a programme being set up or continued.

The legal basis is the states' Interstate Study Accreditation Treaty, in force since 1 January 2018, together with the act establishing the Accreditation Council foundation and the states' ordinances, which are based on a common model ordinance. The ordinances contain the criteria and procedural rules.

Since 2018 the Accreditation Council itself decides on accreditation. The university commissions an agency listed in the European Quality Assurance Register, which runs the procedure and produces a report with a panel of experts. The Council reviews the report and documents and decides. Decisions are published in a public database.

The university bears primary responsibility for quality. Accreditation checks whether it meets that responsibility — per programme in programme accreditation, for the entire internal quality management in system accreditation.

Universities can choose between procedure types. Which fits depends on size, number of programmes and the maturity of their own quality management.

The ordinances distinguish formal and subject-related criteria. The Accreditation Council checks formal criteria on the basis of a review report; subject-related criteria are assessed by external experts including representatives of academia, professional practice and students.

Under the states' ordinances, initial accreditation is valid for eight years; reaccreditation must be applied for before it expires. In the meantime the university remains responsible: it must report significant changes and regularly review its programmes itself.

Internal quality assurance lives on data and feedback. Typical instruments are course evaluations, workload surveys, graduate surveys, indicators on progression and drop-out, and involving students and professional practice in programme reviews. Digital tools make this easier — provided surveys are genuinely anonymous and indicators are not misused to monitor individual lecturers.

Transparency includes the university documenting results and measures taken and informing its members. Some universities also make their quality assurance visible on a public page.

A programme accreditation starts with the university's self-evaluation report: it describes the programme, its objectives, the curriculum with module handbook, the examination regulations, resources and quality assurance. The commissioned agency assembles an expert panel, which reviews the documents and usually visits the university on site or virtually, talking to leadership, lecturers, students and, where relevant, graduates.

The panel writes an accreditation report with a review of the formal criteria and an assessment of the subject-related criteria. The university can comment. On this basis the Accreditation Council decides — with or without conditions. Conditions must be met within a deadline; fulfilment is checked.

Good digital documentation makes the procedure much easier: an up-to-date, versioned module handbook, survey analyses, progression indicators and traceable records of how the university responded to results.