News

This year’s general meeting of AQAS e.V. was combined with a summer party to celebrate the agency’s 20th anniversary.

We were very happy to welcome guests from all over the world in Cologne.

In glorious summer weather, the chairman of the AQAS board Prof. Dr. Eberhard Menzel handed over certificates for the accreditation of 33 study programmes to the representatives of the Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia.

Afterwards, the former Minister for Science, Further Education and Culture in Rhineland-Palatinate and former AQAS board member Prof. Dr. Konrad Wolf as well as our longstanding and well-deserving commission member Prof. Dr. Martina Klocke reviewed the last 20 years. The chairman of the German Accreditation Council (GAC), Prof. Dr.-Ing. Hans-Joachim Bargstädt, dared to take a look into the future with us.

Of course there was also a birthday cake, which was cut by the board and management together.

It was an all-round successful day.

ESU Student Experts’ Pool released a call for new student members for the membership period 2022/2023 which is now open for applications. Please contact ESU directly!

AQAS would like to inform you about the statement of the ENQA board and the BFUG on the invasion of Ukraine and their measures taken. AQAS fully supports the statement of ENQA.

Our colleague Alexandre Wipf has the pleasure to take part in this year’s EQAF Paper Session “Accreditation on the move” on 18 November. We’ll be happy to see you in this online event.

Find out more & register!

On 22nd of September 2021, our colleagues Ronny Heintze and Patrick Heinzer visited the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Education (MoE) and the Commission for Academic Accreditation (CAA) office to discuss future collaboration, mutual understanding and sharing quality assurance best practices. The meeting was attended by H.E. Hussain Al Hammadi, the Minister of MoE, Prof. Mohammed Baniyas, CAA director, and CAA Commissioners.

We are looking forward to the upcoming cooperation and the related projects, which will only be the beginning of a long lasting partnership.

Based on its experience in in the evaluation of African Higher Education Centres of Excellence, AQAS recently carried out a digital site visit at Moi University, Kenya as part of the assessment of two ACE-programmes at the „Africa Centre of Excellence in Phytochemicals, Textile and Renewable Energy“. The international expert team composed of members from Botswana, Kenya, Austria and Germany engaged in open and fruitful discussions with university and student representatives. AQAS would like to thank all participants and looks forward to further evaluations of the research institutions which are funded by the World Bank.

AQAS recently conducted two digital site visits at Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia (UPI) as part of an international accreditation procedure. UPI applied for accreditation of its programmes in vocational teacher education and language teacher education based on the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance. The panel of experts, composed of international reviewers from the academic field as well as student and labour market representatives, experienced a congenial atmosphere and engaged in professional and in-depth discussions with the university.

This is not the first collaboration with UPI which has become a member institution of AQAS in 2020. UPI has already received international accreditation by AQAS of programmes in Management and Geography Teacher Education. AQAS is delighted to welcome UPI as a further international member. As Professor Menzel, Head of the Management Board, emphasized: “AQAS is excited to welcome a member institution from Southeast Asia with which the agency has cooperated well in the past on the enhancement of quality in education. We look forward to our further collaboration”.

AQAS hopes to celebrate the membership in an appropriate ceremony with UPI in the future.

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