FAQ category: 16 Criteria for accreditation

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.

External quality assurance of studies and teaching has always been based on the principle that responsibility for the quality and quality development of study programmes lies with the higher education institutions themselves. This dictum can be found in a prominent position both in the interstate study accreditation treaty (Art. 1 Para. 1) and in the European Standards and Guidelines as the European reference framework (ESG 2.1).

For the specific program accreditation procedure as well as the internal study program accreditation within the framework of system accreditation, this means that the determination of the quality of the content of studies and teaching in individual cases primarily results from quality objectives defined by the higher education institution itself. Or even more specifically: The higher education institution defines qualification goals for each study programme and is measured against their implementation.

The qualification goals are thus an essential foundation for the entire evaluation of academic content and are therefore of central importance.
The extent to which the qualification goals are implemented within the curriculum (i.e., at the module level) is another key issue in accreditation; however, this must be analytically distinguished from the assessment of the overall qualification goals intended for a study programme.

§ Section 11 (1) and (2) MRVO specifies the criteria according to which the coherence of the qualification goals of the study programme concept is to be examined. In essence, it is laid down there:

• In addition to academic qualification, the ability to take on qualified employment, personal development and social relevance are also prominently anchored as further objectives of higher education as defined in the interstate study accreditation treaty.
• Based on the descriptors or competence dimensions of the “Qualifications Framework for German Higher Education Qualifications” (cf. explanatory memorandum to Section 11 (2) MRVO), the qualification goals define the “professional, scientific, artistic, methodological and personality-building requirements” for the study programme in summary form.

This is to be distinguished from § 12 para. 1 MRVO, which asks, among other things, how the qualification goals aimed for in the study programme as a whole are implemented curricularly (i.e. at module level).

The Accreditation Council derives a few basic considerations for the review of the qualification goals from the guidelines in accordance with § 11 para. 1 and 2:

a.) Level of detail

• The qualification goals relate to the specific study programme as a whole. In other words, the qualification goals describe the knowledge and skills that students will have acquired at the end of their studies, taking appropriate account of the social and personal context
• The qualification goals correspond to the desired degree level and are based on the descriptors of the Qualifications Framework for German Higher Education Qualifications.
• The qualification goals relate to the academic or artistic qualification aimed for with the study programme as well as to the qualification for qualified employment in the fields of activity described. They classify the study programme academically (e.g. with regard to the possibilities of further academic qualification) and professionally (e.g. with regard to the fulfillment of external requirements for regulated professions, inclusion of Professional Practice).

b.) Transparency / Accountability

• The qualification goals defined by the higher education institutions are not only included in the self-evaluation report, but are also accessible to the general public in an appropriate form. However, it is not mandatory that the qualification goals are anchored in the examination regulations or the module handbook, but at least they are published on the website and / or the course flyer, for example.
• The content of the qualification goals defined by the higher education institutions is consistent between the various versions (e.g. self-evaluation report, examination regulations, module handbook). This means that it is legitimate not to use the “full text” of the qualification goals throughout, but the different versions must not contradict each other.
• The qualification goals can be found in the Diploma Supplement under section 4.2 “Program Learning Outcomes”.