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Since commencement of the HEdA, the AAQ has carried out a number of institutional accreditation procedures and has collected feedback in different forms. Some higher education institutions expressed concerns about possible consequences of the recommendations in future accreditation procedures. The AAQ has taken this as an opportunity to conduct a thematic analysis with the intention to give an overview and provide clarity in the context of the recommendations.

The report shows the differences between conditions and recommendations with regard to their legal basis and their actual purpose. Thus, conditions are subject to certain rules and serve more for quality assurance, while recommendations are completely free in their form and use and serve more for quality development. Nevertheless, in practice they are not completely separable. For this reason, the conditions are taken into account in the analysis, especially for comparison purposes.

For a while now, AAQ has been making sure in its accompanying of the expert groups that the recommendations are clearly focused and implementable and that an approximate balance is maintained in the use of recommendations. In the future, AAQ will continue to ensure that the recommendations remain a means of quality development and that the higher education institutions will continue to be free to decide how they deal with the recommendations and whether or not they want to implement them.

Thematic Analysis – Recommendations in Accreditation Procedures (DE)

29/09/2021