16.3 Is a Master's degree possible even if fewer than 300 ECTS points have been earned together with the previous Bachelor's degree? (§ 8 para. 2 MRVO)

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.