13.1 How does the Accreditation Council process applications for accreditation?

Accreditation applications are regularly handled by the German Accreditation Council in the following manner:

The Head Office first carries out a plausibility check. This consists of a reading of the accreditation report and, if necessary, individual inquiries in the self-evaluation report and attachments. For reasons of efficiency and cost savings, it is important to avoid duplicate reviews in the peer-review procedure with the Agencies and the peer review panel on the one hand, and in the Accreditation Council on the other, as far as possible. Comprehensible accreditation reports are therefore essential in the new Accreditation system. If too many questions remain unanswered, the report is returned (see FAQ 13.2).

Based on this reading – every accreditation report is read in full – the Head Office prepares a draft resolution. In this, the decision proposals of the Agencies (formal report) and the peer review panel (peer review report) can be followed or deviated from with reasons.

In the next step, a rapporteur from the group of university lecturers in the Accreditation Council examines the draft resolution, accreditation report and any other documents and submits a vote. Additional members of the Council from other member groups may also participate in this phase.

The vote on the report, any revised draft resolution and the application documents are submitted to the Accreditation Council for a resolution. It decides at one of its usually four annual meetings. Each member can request a discussion on each application. In practice, it has been shown that the majority of applications are undisputed; the Accreditation Council endeavors to concentrate the limited resource of “consultation time” on cases that are actually disputed and on those of fundamental importance.

The accreditation decision is issued on the basis of the resolution. If the Accreditation Council intends to deviate from the decision proposals in the accreditation report in a way that is burdensome for the applicant higher education institution, namely by imposing additional conditions or a negative decision, no notification is issued. Instead, the higher education institution is first given the opportunity to comment on the Accreditation Council’s provisional resolution (§ 22 para. 3 MRVO). If use is made of this opportunity and the statement questions the intended decision, the Accreditation Council deals with the application a second time. Only then, taking into account the statement, does it make a final decision on the accreditation of the study programme or the QM system and any necessary conditions and issues the accreditation decision. In the event that conditions are imposed, the deadline for fulfilling the conditions is only set in this accreditation decision.

If conditions are imposed, the higher education institution must submit evidence of fulfillment of conditions by the deadline specified in the notification (§ 27 para. 3 MRVO); the Accreditation Council then decides on the fulfillment of conditions. If the Accreditation Council comes to the conclusion that the fulfillment of conditions has not been proven, the higher education institution is given a one-time grace period of usually six months.