Programme accreditation in Germany

The Accreditation Council accredits Bachelor's and Master's degree programmes at state and state-recognised universities and University of Applied Science as well as Bachelor's degree programmes at universities of cooperative education. For this purpose, ZEvA carries out the assessment and prepares an accreditation report which serves the Accreditation Council as its basis of decision-making.

Cluster accreditations enable a higher education institution or a larger faculty to accredit its study programmes with less effort in a relatively short time. In this process, study programmes with affinity to the subject are combined into a cluster and assessed together.

In the model assessment (also called system assessment or model evaluation), matters relating to several study programmes at a higher education institution are assessed in a separate assessment procedure, e.g., teacher training study programme models, special didactic models or study programmes with a high degree of interconnectedness within a faculty.

Outside the responsibility of the Accreditation Council, ZEvA also offers the accreditation of doctoral or diploma study programmes, especially in Lower Saxony. The procedure here follows the same procedure as the accreditation of Bachelor's and Master's study programmes, so they can also be assessed together with these in a cluster. In this case, the decision is made by the ZEvA Commission.

Programmes offered by a German higher education institution together with one or more higher education institutions in other European countries which conclude with a Joint Degree can be accredited directly by ZEvA according to the European Approach. This decision can then be recognised both by the Accreditation Council and in the partner countries. You can find more information here.