News

The Swiss Higher Education Conference approved the accreditation guidelines pursuant to HEdA at its meeting on 28 May 2015. All the legal foundations for institutional accreditation are thus in place.

The EUR-ACE^® Label is an international label for engineering degree programmes. The Swiss Agency has recently been authorised to award the label. In February 2015 the label was awarded for the first time to a bachelor degree course at the University of Applied Sciences Rapperswil (HSR). Further labels will be going to courses at HES-SO.

On 19 December 2014 the OAQ-led working group approved the draft for the accreditation guidelines under the HEdA, including comments, and submitted it to the SBFI. The mandate that the Agency had received from the State Secretary has thus been completed on schedule.

The Federal Act on Funding and Coordination of the Swiss Higher Education Sector (HEdA) that was introduced in early 2015 regulates the accreditation of Swiss higher education institutions: the Swiss Agency of Accreditation and Quality Assurance – or AAQ – will now conduct accreditations. The AAQ is under the authority of the Swiss Accreditation Council.

The University of Innsbruck has had its quality assurance system inspected by the Swiss Agency. The presentation of the certificate marked the official conclusion of the quality audit.

The final decisions taken by the Swiss University Conference (SUC) in 2014 awarded accreditations to the Staatsunabhängige Theologische Hochschule (STH Basel) and the EMBA in NPO management at the VMI, University of Fribourg.