ShareApproval for the commitment to institutional accreditation at faculty-level during the 2022-2024 period
In 2018 AQU Catalunya set in motion institutional accreditation at faculty-level, which is a process that will gradually replace the accreditation of study programmes.
Institutional accreditation will provide for the accreditation of all recognised first/bachelor and master's degree programmes delivered in a faculty or school for a renewable period of five years, thereby replacing the accreditation of individual degree programmes. Accreditation lasts five years, after which it must be renewed.
At the present time in Catalonia there are more than 170 faculties, schools and institutes that the process of institutional accreditation can apply to. So far, faculties and schools that have obtained institutional accreditation amount to less than 6% of the total and, at the current rate, AQU Catalunya calculates it will take up to ten years to carry out the institutional accreditation of all of these faculties, schools and institutes. The Agency's Governing Board has therefore agreed that AQU Catalunya is to:
- Launch an awareness campaign and establish support tools and utilities for the process of institutional accreditation so as to stimulate the involvement of faculties, schools and institutes in institutional accreditation procedures.
- Agree, together with the universities, on an institutional accreditation plan for 2022-2024 in order for all (100%) higher education institutions to undergo institutional accreditation.
- Proceed with the necessary economic measures so that faculties and schools that choose not to undergo institutional accreditation during the period covered by the accreditation plan can bear the cost of programme accreditation.
The Agency's objective is to increase the number of institutional accreditations at faculty-level from 20 to 40 each year and to bring down the number of individual programme accreditations from 80 to practically 0 so that the burden of review and evaluation is reduced and efficiency increased across the entire system of higher education in Catalonia.