01.6 How is the accreditation deadline calculated if an application for reaccreditation is submitted well before the expiry of the previous accreditation deadline?

According to § 26 para. 2 MRVO, reaccreditation follows directly after the previous accreditation.

The purpose of this regulation is to ensure the seamless accreditation of study programmes. However, if an application for reaccreditation is submitted well before the end of the previous accreditation period, this would mean that the reaccreditation period would begin well into the future. This would mean that there would be far more than eight years between the Accreditation Council’s consideration of the study programme. This would also mean that the accreditation decision would be based on an outdated assessment at the time it came into effect.

This will be illustrated with an example: An application for reaccreditation is submitted in March 2020. The accreditation in place at this time does not expire until 30.09.2023. The Accreditation Council makes a positive accreditation decision in June 2020. In this example, the reaccreditation period would run from 01.10.2023 to 30.09.2031. The Accreditation Council decision made in 2020 would come into effect three years later and would possibly no longer be up to date. In addition, the Accreditation Council would not deal with the study programme again until 2031. There would therefore be more than eleven years between the Accreditation Council meetings, not the eight provided for in the MRVO.

For this reason, the Accreditation Council, in consultation with the legal supervisory authority, decided at its meeting on 04.06.2020 to use the regulation for concept accreditations in § 26 para. 1 MRVO for the interpretation of § 26 para. 2 MRVO, according to which the accreditation period begins at the latest at the beginning of the second semester following the announcement of the decision. In the example case described, this would mean that the reaccreditation period would begin on 01.04.2021 and then run until 31.03.2029.