Aarhus School of Architecture awarded positive institutional accreditation

The Accreditation Council has made a positive decision on quality assurance at Aarhus School of Architecture.

10.06.2020

As you are aware, Aarhus School of Architecture has since 2016 been undergoing an accreditation process in which The Accreditation Council has been assessing the School’s quality assurance system. The Accreditation Council has now chosen to award Aarhus School of Architecture a positive institutional accreditation. Institutional accreditation is an assessment of whether an educational institution has a system that is able to ensure the quality of their educational programmes. And Rector Torben Nielsen is pleased that the School has been awarded a positive accreditation.

‘We are of course very proud that we have achieved a positive accreditation of our institution. Working on the accreditation has had a strong presence at the School. And it is a task many of our employees have spent many hours working on. We have never doubted the quality of our education. But we now also have the corroboration of the Danish Accreditation Institution that our quality assurance system works’, says Torben Nielsen.

It is the Accreditation Council that decides whether a quality assurance is sufficiently well described and well functioning in practice to enable the institution to carry out its own continuous and systematic assurance and development of the quality and relevance of educational programmes over the next six years. There are five set criteria on which quality assurance is assessed by the educational institution. Apart from this, the institution has a great deal of freedom of choice to organise quality assurance the way that makes most sense to it. The accreditation process reveals whether the system is sufficiently well described and satisfactory in practice.

‘Throughout the entire process, we have maintained that our quality assurance system would need to reflect the way we do things at our school and not merely repeat prevalent theories. This was a gamble. But it is now with great pleasure that we see the Danish Accreditation Institution has been able to understand our vision’, says Torben Nielsen.

Uncomplicated and clear

The decision to award a positive institutional accreditation was made when The Accreditation Council held an online meeting on 9 June. At this meeting, it was, in particular, the artistic higher education institutions that were on the agenda. Apart from Aarhus School of Architecture, Design School Kolding and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture were also being assessed. The three artistic institutions were all awarded positive institutional accreditations.

‘At Aarhus School of Architecture, the quality assurance system is characterized by being uncomplicated and clear, while systematically ensuring the quality and relevance of their three educational programmes. All of their work with quality is firmly rooted in the organization, and it is also well supported by the School’s management structure. Aarhus School of Architecture has shown that they work with clear ambitions for the quality they provide. Ambitions, which are supported by relevant standards of quality and key figures, and which teachers, management and students are strongly involved in fulfilling’, said Per B. Christensen, chairman of The Accreditation Council, regarding the positive institutional accreditation of Aarhus School of Architecture.

See the entire report on Aarhus School of Architecture by the Danish Accreditation Institution here (in Danish).