Abstract
The German accreditation policy was introduced in 1998 as a response to the Bologna Process and transition to a new degree structure. Accreditation was expected to ensure minimum quality standards in higher education curricula and to assess labour market relevance of newly established Bachelor and Master programmes in Germany. All new study programmes are expected to be re-accredited every five years. The structure of the German accreditation system consists of two levels. The Accreditation Council defines standards, procedures, and criteria for accreditation and Accreditation Agencies, accredited by the Council, perform the accreditation. The accreditation system has established a comprehensive, external quality assessment system for teaching and learning in Germany. The policy, however, suffers from several problems. A program accreditation is an expensive procedure and the expenses have to be covered by institutions without any additional support. The accreditation system cannot keep up with curricula reforms and many programmes therefore have had to start without accreditation. Furthermore, the accreditation system contributes to the emergence of an overly complex system of quality assurance that combines state level, federal level and European level responsibilities.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The reason for this is a constitutional law that all students have the right to finish their degree programme under the same conditions which were in place when they started it so no student can be forced to switch from a traditional to a new programme in the middle of his or her course of study.
- 2.
Technical universities have the highest number of study programmes awarding the degree of Diplom which is the usual one subject study programme in most of the technical and engineering sciences, but also in economics and social sciences. Basically the Diplom was/is the degree in all professional subjects. Universities of applied sciences also award or awarded a Diplom but with the additional letters FH in brackets behind the degree (for Fachhochschule) to denote the difference between the two types of institutions.
- 3.
For example the analysis of the implementation of bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics carried out in INCHER-Kassel on behalf of the European Physical Society since 2008.
- 4.
For non-German readers it should be mentioned here that the idea of defining a master programme as “postgraduate” is not very widespread in Germany. The traditional university degree programmes all finished at the level of a master degree from which the issue of getting a doctoral degree was clearly separated. This also holds true for the majority of graduate schools or graduate centres emerging currently in Germany. Most of them are clearly targeted towards doctoral students and apart from a few exceptions which have explicitly adopted the American model, German graduate schools do not accept students aiming for a master’s degree. Thus, selection for a doctorate takes place on the basis of master’s degrees not bachelor’s degrees and doctoral candidates are expected to be familiar with research methodology and theory of their subject or field of expertise.
- 5.
Performance contracts are now more commonly used to determine the annual budget provided by the responsible state for a given higher education institution located in that state.
- 6.
The Ministers of Science and Education of those countries having signed the Bologna Declaration meet every 2 years in the framework of so-called follow-up conferences in order to discuss progress made and possibly add to the reform agenda or correct it if developments go in an unwanted direction.
- 7.
The original name of ENQA was: European Network of Quality Assessment Agencies. It is now: European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education.
- 8.
The Dublin Descriptors (named after the city where the Joint Quality Initiative – an informal group of experts for quality assurance from a variety of European countries – met to formulate them) are a short list of competences which can be expected from bachelor and master graduates and from Ph.D. candidates independent of their particular field of study.
References
Accreditation Council (2009). Accredited study programmes – Statistics. http://www. hochschulkompass.de/kompass/xml/akkr/akkr_stat_a.htm. Accessed 23 January 2009.
Bologna Declaration (1999). The Bologna declaration of 19 June 1999. Joint Declaration of the European Ministers of Education. http:/http://www.bologna-berlin2003.de/pdf/Bologna_; declaration.pdf. Accessed 4 June 2006.
Bretschneider, F., Wildt, J. (Eds.) (2005). Handbuch Akkreditierung von Studiengängen. Eine Einführung für Hochschule, Politik und Berufspraxis. Bielefeld: Bertelsmann.
ENQA (2005). Standards and guidelines for quality assurance in the European higher education area. Helsinki: ENQA. http://www.bologna-bergen2005.no/Docs/00-Main_doc/050221_ENQA _report.pdf. Accessed 4 June 2006.
HRK (Ed.) (2006). Statistische Daten zur Einführung von Bachelor- und Masterstudiengängen. Sommersemester 2006. Statistiken zur Hochschulpolitik 1/2006. Bonn: HRK. http://www.hrk.de/download/dateien/HRK_Doku1_2006_Sose2006.pdf. Accessed 8 June 2006.
Kehm, B. M. (2005). Akkreditierungsagenturen in Deutschland. In: F. Bretschneider, & J. Wildt (Eds.), Handbuch Akkreditierung von Studiengängen. Eine Einführung für Hochschule, Politik und Berufspraxis (pp. 131–144). Bielefeld: Bertelsmann.
Kehm, B. M. (2006). The German ‘Initiative for Excellence’ and rankings. International Higher Education, 44(summer), 20–22.
Pratt, J. (2004). The accreditation model and policy transfer. In J. Pratt (Ed.), The ‘Accreditation Model’: Policy transfer in higher education in Austria and Britain (pp. 107–127). Oxford: Symposium Books.
Reuke, H. (2005). Das Akkreditierungsverfahren. In F. Bretschneider, & J. Wildt (Eds.), Handbuch Akkreditierung von Studiengängen. Eine Einführung für Hochschule, Politik und Berufspraxis (pp. 145–150). Bielefeld: Bertelsmann.
Schade, A. (2004). Shift of paradigm in quality assurance in Germany: More autonomy but multiple quality assessment. In S. Schwarz, & D. Westerheijden (Eds.), Accreditation and evaluation in the European Higher Education Area (pp. 175–196). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Schade, A. (2005). Der Akkreditierungsrat. In F. Bretschneider, & J. Wildt (Eds.), Handbuch Akkreditierung von Studiengängen. Eine Einführung für Hochschule, Politik und Berufspraxis (pp. 125–130). Bielefeld: Bertelsmann.
Schwarz, S., Westerheijden, D. (Eds.) (2004). Accreditation and evaluation in the European Higher Education Area. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Serrano-Velarde, K. (2006). The politics of quality assurance. Paper presented at the 3rd EUREDOCS Conference, 16–18 June 2006, Kassel.
Sorbonne Declaration (1998). Sorbonne Joint Declaration on harmonisation of the architecture of the European higher education system. http://www.bologna-berlin2003.de/pdf/Sorbonne_; declaration.pdf. Accessed 8 June 2006.
Standing Conference of the Ministers of Culture of the German States (2002). Decision about the future development of quality assurance in German higher education. Bonn, 1 March. http://www.akkreditierungsrat.de/KMK_Qualitatssicherung.pdf. Accessed 3 June 2006.
Teichler, U. (2003). Die Entstehung eines superkomplexen Systems der Qualitätsbewertung in Deutschland. In E. Mayer, H.-D. Daniel, U. Teichler (Eds.), Die neue Verantwortung der Hochschulen (pp. 213–215). Bonn: Lemmens.
Teichler, U. (2006). Akkreditierung in Europa. In G. Simonis, & T. Walter (Eds.), LernOrt Universität. Umbruch durch Internationalisierung und Multimedia (pp. 131–151). Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
Van Damme, D. (1999). Internationalisation in quality assurance: Towards worldwide accreditation? Report commissioned for the IAUP XIIth Triennial Conference in Brussels, 11–14 July 1999. http://www.ia-up.org/. Accessed 3 June 2006.
Westerheijden, D. (2005). Akkreditierung im europäischen Kontext. Neuere Entwicklungen der Qualitätssicherung im europäischen Hochschulraum. In F. Bretschneider, & J. Wildt (Eds.) Handbuch Akkreditierung von Studiengängen. Eine Einführung für Hochschule, Politik und Berufspraxis (pp. 97–111). Bielefeld: Bertelsmann.
Acknowledgements
I thank Kathia Serrano-Velarde for providing me with her (as yet unpublished) paper and thus contributing not only additional information but also some of the ideas and perspectives which have been included in this analysis. However, all possible mistakes and misinterpretations are those of the author.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kehm, B.M. (2010). The German System of Accreditation. In: Dill, D., Beerkens, M. (eds) Public Policy for Academic Quality. Higher Education Dynamics, vol 30. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3754-1_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3754-1_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-3753-4
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-3754-1
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawEducation (R0)