and Master Programmes in German Higher Education Institutions

8 Crucial conditionsIn this section the conditions related to the introduction of Bachelor and Master degree programmeswill be examined. Accreditation and funding will be addressed.8.1 AccreditationAccording to the accredication council’s website (www.akkreditierungsrat.de), until February2002 only 20 Bachelor and 39 Master degree programmes have been accredited by theaccreditation council itself or one its subsidiaries. This is only a very small minority of the549 Bachelor and the 371 Master programmes currently offered according to theHochschulkompass (3,6% of Bachelor and 10,5% of Master programmes).According to the Länder ministries, accreditation is planned for about half of the existingB/M (545 out of a total of 1095 officially recognised programmes). In most cases, theLänder ministries grant public recognition (“Genehmigung”) of the programmes under thecondition of their future accreditation. However, this is not always the case: about half ofthe programmes have received official recognition without the Länder ministries knowingwhether or not accreditation is planned (Jahn 2001c).In a few areas, like engineering or business administration, some institutions also seek accreditationby other (international or American) agencies. Examples are the Fakultät fürElektrotechnik und Informationstechnik of the Universität Karlsruhe that got accredited bythe American Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) and the Fakultätfür Betriebswirtschaftslehre of the Universität Mannheim got accredited by the AmericanAACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business). Another avenue that iscurrently emerging is the accreditation through European networks organised by the universitiesthemselves. Examples are the Quality Review Program of the European Consortiumof Innovative Universities (ECIU) and the Consortium for European Management Schools(CEMS). While there is no data available on the total number of programmes accredited bythese other agencies, it is safe to say that so far no more than a handful of institutions havemade use of this possibility.Like the B/M, the accreditation council has been introduced for a trial period only – it has toprove its usefulness through the way it handles its task. 66 Our survey therefore asked institutionalmanagement for their opinions concerning accreditation. A bit less than half (45%)of all institutions indicated that they considered the system of accreditation an improvementover the previous system (“Rahmenprüfungsordnungen”), while only 5% considered that itis worse than the traditional system. 22% indicated no particular opinion, and 20% said thataccreditation is good in principle, but that it should be carried out in other ways 67 .The main complaint made by the respondents with regard to accreditation concerns the highcosts to the institutions (mentioned by 15 respondents, several of which mentioned that it isparticularly a problem for smaller institutions). Four respondents mentioned that the processrequires too many and or too detailed procedures. Several respondents mentioned issuesrelated to difficulties of defining or determining quality: two mentioned that quality is not66However, in autumn 2001 the work of the accreditation council has already been evaluated positively in byan international expert panel (KMK/HRK (Hg.) 2001) and the Permanent Conference of the German FederalEducation Ministers (KMK) has pleaded in principal in favour of keeping the accreditation council and therelation accreditation system (NS 295 KMK, 18./19.10.2001, Nr. 5).67 This opinion was particularly strong in the TU sector, where 56% of the institutions indicated this55