The President of the German Rectors' Conference (HRK), Prof Dr Horst Hippler, described the agreement reached yesterday by the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany (KMK) on a treaty between the federal states on the accreditation system as a “first step towards the necessary changes”. A reshaping of the legal framework for the procedures had become necessary following a ruling by the German Federal Constitutional Court in February.
Prof Dr Horst Hippler added, “Unfortunately, however, the KMK did not manage to bring all the states together in the treaty, meaning that special state-specific regulations can once again be expected. This cannot benefit academia and students.”
“What is important now is how the treaty between the federal states is implemented through a framework regulation for accreditation procedures that is common to the states,” said HRK Vice-President for Teaching, Learning, Teacher Education and Lifelong Learning, Prof Dr Holger Burckhart. “We trust that the framework regulation will ensure the necessary degree of freedom for the universities to enable study and teaching to be organised in a high-quality and largely autonomous way. Overly detailed rules would be out of place here, and could run counter to the Federal Constitutional Court ruling. We have always considered the significant involvement of academia in the design of the framework regulation to be crucial, and are ready to work together constructively to that end.”
