PIONEER

Experiences with the

European approach to

accreditation

Prof. Dr Steven Van de Walle

KU Leuven Public Governance Institute

EMJMD Cluster meeting

European Approach for Quality Assurance of Joint Programmes

Brussels, 24-25 October 2018

Public Governance Institute

Erasmus Mundus Master of Science in Public

Sector Innovation and eGovernance

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Programme, joint degree

Public Governance Institute

Different requirements & timelines per country

• Germany:

o Early accreditation needed, and obtained in advance.

Process started before start of programme

• Belgium

o Normally, when new MA, “Toets Nieuwe Opleiding”, and

subsequently accreditation

o Erasmus Mundus not considered ‘new’ and deemed to

be accredited

• Estonia:

o Automatically accredited for the period of the existing

institutional accreditation

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Germany (I)

• AQAS Field visit 12-13.12.2017.

• Report 04.04.2018, and invitation to react

• AQAS decision on 17.05.2018

o Conditional accreditation obtained till 30.09.2024 (6

years)

o Conditions to be met by 28.02.2019. These require

programme change and formal amendment.

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Germany (II)

• AQAS – Agentur für Qualitätssicherung durch

Akkreditierung von Studiengängen

• Expert committee consisting of 2 academics from 2

disciplines, 1 labour market representative, 1 student

• Cost: approx. € 12.000 + travel for our own team

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Belgium

• Equivalence application to NVAO on 12.07.2018

• Answer due 12.10.2018

• No strict need for having this equivalence

• Advantage

o Should EM funding disappear in 2021, MA would also

loose accreditation shortly after, and needs to go

through TNO process.

o Having an accreditation till 2024. This allows us to

continue with an accredited PIONEER programme even

if EU funding stops.

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Positive experiences

• We first focused on getting a national German

accreditation, but found that the European Approach

guidelines are more focussing on the joint aspects of the

programme

• Only one report & visit

• European approach new to universities. Legal offices and

quality assurance offices gave considerable space to

diverge from standard procedures in the university

• Not very different from a normal accreditation (self-

evaluation report + field visit)

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Cultural differences

• When invited to react to the visitation report

o KU Leuven approach: always react, elaborate

comments, adding interpretations, suggest

reformulations.

o Münster approach: only react to obviously wrong

assumptions or statements by the reviewers, or

misinterpretations of discussion during site visit.

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Issues

• Writing a self-evaluation when the programme has hardly

started.

• ‘European’ approach, with only Germans on the visitation

committee

• Delays in reporting

• Prior check with NVAO whether they would accept

equivalence when working with AQAS

• Still no answer from NVAO.

• Overall: positive experience.

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Accreditation not our biggest problem

• Joint examination rules: failing master thesis, exam

retakes, course definitions

o Which national legislation or universities´ rules do we

violate?

o Loads of pragmatism needed, especially when the

lawyers disagree

o Keeping fingers crossed – hoping no failed student

brings in a strong legal team….

Public Governance Institute

Accreditation not our biggest problem

• Semesters not aligned

• Inter-university collaboration requires university-level

agreements & signatures. On everything.

• Despite joint degree, Estonian law still requires and

additional certificate.

• Compulsory use of national languages in diploma

supplements.

• We spend approx. 1FTE on the administrative

management of the programme. Management lumpsum

barely sufficient.