Accreditation is the condition of a higher education programme's legitimacy: only an accredited programme gives the student a state-recognised degree, and when accreditation is lost the law protects the student. This page is written precisely from the student's angle: why accreditation matters for me, how to read the programme's status, and what happens when the status changes.
What accreditation means for a programme
Under the law, the purpose of accreditation is, through determining the compliance of an educational programme with accreditation standards, to promote the raising of the quality of education, the establishment of systematic self-assessment and the development of quality-assurance mechanisms. The standards are in the law itself: the programme's aims, learning outcomes and correspondence to them; teaching methodology and organisation; students' achievements; provision of teaching resources; opportunities for developing quality. For the student this means accreditation is not a bureaucratic inspection but a guarantee of the conditions in which he or she studies.