Monthly Archives: July 2019

AQAS congratulates its membership universities, RWTH University Aachen, the University of Bonn and the Free University Berlin (in an university association), to be under the selected universities in the framework of the “Excellence Strategy” programme, under the “Universities of Excellence” funding line. “On one hand”, states AQAS-Chairman Prof. Dr Eberhard Menzel, “the selection of these universities contributes to the fortification of the German academic landscape on an international level, on the other hand it can be seen as sign of excellent internal and external quality assurance of these universities”.

This week, AQAS joined a training session for a delegation from Huaihua University, China in Berlin. The delegation visits Germany to learn about the German higher education system and to exchange in a dialogue about innovative teaching methods. Dr. Dorothee Groeger, consultant at AQAS, contributed to the visit by providing an overview of external quality assurance procedures in Germany and worldwide.

AQAS welcomes the mutual exchange about higher education with universities worldwide and hopes that the delegation returns home safely with manifold impressions and new perspectives.

UNESCO and DAAD provided an online and face to face course for staff working in quality assurance at universities and at external QA organisations from six Southern African countries. Ms. Doris Herrmann, Managing Director at AQAS, felt honoured to be one of the senior experts who functioned as facilitators during the IIEP online course as well as during the conference and training which took place in Botswana.

Ms. Herrmann appreciated the high-level discussions between the African and European senior experts with the participants of the course. It became obvious that although some of the aspects discussed were specific for African Higher Education systems, many challenges are similar in all parts of the world. Some of the questions discussed were: How should the continental African Standards and Guidelines be aligned with regional QA criteria? Which cornerstones are important for implementing national external QA systems? Which benefits and disadvantages do the qualitative versus quantitative QA approaches have?

All participants who successfully completed the training received their certificates in a ceremony at the end of the course. The participants considered the training to be helpful for their everyday business: “We did learn a lot and benefitted immensely. We look forward to further courses and collaboration in the near future. The experience we had during the said event was awesome.

Being one of the pioneers of the European Approach, the University of Eastern Finland and the consortium partner universities have considered suitable EQAR-registered agencies throughout Europe to accredit the Erasmus Mundus joint degree programme “European Forestry”. The procedure which has included international experts and the positive decision by the AQAS Standing Commission show the efficiency and applicability of this new tool on European level. We want to congratulate the consortium of the programme on this very good result!