News

Mit dem Ziel, nationale wie internationale Akkreditierungsberichte transparent und zentral öffentlich zugänglich zu machen, ist die vom European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR) geführter Database of External Quality Assurance Results (DEQAR) in den letzten Monaten stetig angewachsen und deckt mittlerweile Gutachten von 32 europäischen Agenturen und über 2.000 Hochschulen und Institutionen ab.

Mit aktuell 7.263 der über 35.000 hochgeladenen Gutachten positioniert sich AQAS deutlich als eine der erfahrensten europäischen Agenturen.
Sämtliche Datensätze können hier abgerufen werden.

With the aim of making national and international accreditation reports publicly available in a transparent and centralized way, the Database of External Quality Assurance Results (DEQAR), which is managed by the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR), has grown steadily in recent months and now covers reports from 32 European agencies and more than 2,000 universities and institutions.

With currently 7,263 of the more than 35,000 uploaded reports, AQAS clearly positions itself as one of the most experienced agencies in Europe.
All datasets can be found here.

In yesterdays meeting at AQAS the ImpEA project aiming at the implementation of the European Approach entered a new project phase starting the development of an online toolkit that will help institutions and experts in applying the European Approach. The project is funded by the European Commission and with Partners from Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain, AQAS is the only German accreditation agency involved in it. Facilitating external quality assurance for Joint programmes has long been a priority in our work reflecting the believe that joint programmes are crucial for the internationalisation activities of German higher education institutions. Further information can be found at www.impea.online

Gerne möchten wir Sie auf folgendes Training des European Consortium for Accreditation (ECA) aufmerksam machen, welches in unserer Geschäftsstelle in Köln stattfinden wird:

ECA training: „Assessing Joint Programmes, am 10./11. Oktober 2019, Köln.

Das Training bereitet die Teilnehmer auf die Akkreditierung von Joint Programmes vor, und hat einen speziellen Fokus aus den auch in Deutschland einsetzbaren „European Approach for QA of Joint Programmes.“

Genaue Informationen zu Ablauf, Inhalt und Kosten des Trainings sowie zur Anmeldung finden Sie auf der Programmseite von ECA

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!

The first AQAS accreditation in the United Arab Emirates was awarded last week to AL Ain University of Science and Technology for the programmes of the College of Communication and Media. The certificate was handed as part of a ceremony in presence of the Rector, Chancellor, Deans as well as councilors to the minister of education. This accreditation underlines the achievements of the College and AAU in upgrading the scientific level of its education. Once more congratulations to the College and AAU!

In last week’s meeting the Standing Commission decided positively on the accreditation status of the Bachelor study programme “Mass Communication and Media” (with the specializations in journalism, advertising and public relations) offered by the Al-Ain University of Science and Technology in the United Arab Emirates. With this decision the Standing Commission confirms the essential compliance of the study programme with the requirements of the AQAS criteria and thus with the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG). Our congratulations go to the management of Al-Ain University, Professor Ghaleb El Refae, AAU’s president and Dr Noor Atatreh, Chancellor of the university, and Professor Abdulrahman Dheyab Abdullah, dean of the College of Communication and Media, for this great achievement.