Sigmund Freud Private University is trying to continue the master in two ways.
Sigmund Freud Private University (SFU) is fighting against the end of the master’s degree in medicine, offered since 2015/16. The Austrian Quality Assurance and Accreditation Agency (AQ Austria) recently revoked approval of the medical master’s degree due to quality defects. The SFU now wants to object to the relevant part of the decision, as Dean Alfred Pritz confirmed on Tuesday. At the same time, a re-presentation of the course is being prepared.
SFU is trying two ways to ensure the continuity of the Master of Medicine. As part of the appeal against the AQ Austria decision, which has already been received by the SFU and is still being considered, Pritz wants to file about two reports from professors from Germany.
What the re-accreditation application means in practice for students who will soon complete a Bachelor of Medicine at SFU and then wish to start a Master’s degree must be clarified with AQ Austria at the end of January, according to Pritz. “There may be a loss of time for a few months”, is Pritz’s expectation if the re-accreditation is successful. The Agency shall only examine this application after its submission.
Assessment as a sticking point
An essential criterion for the withdrawal of accreditation was an expert opinion prepared on behalf of AQ Austria. He not only identified problems with the medical master’s degree at SFU, but also several other deviations from the standards required for the university’s quality development and management plan, and recommended 51 conditions to the AQ Austria board for re-accreditation of the private university. The approval must also only be extended for six years and not twelve years as requested.
In the case of the master’s degree in medicine, the deficiencies in the report were assessed as “not remediable” within the legal period of two years, which is why the accreditation was revoked. The reason is “large deviations from national and international standards” in terms of personnel and research infrastructure. There were also “considerable concerns” about study plans: due to the lack of a separate university clinic, clinical teaching is too late and insufficient, and because of the large number of cooperating clinics, a uniform standard of training is “hardly achievable “. According to Pritz, the SFU is already active here: concrete negotiations are being made with the hospital authorities for the installation of university clinics.
Responsibility of universities “very high”
The withdrawal of accreditation for the master’s does not affect the degrees already acquired, as the managing director of AQ Austria, Jürgen Petersen, recently emphasized to journalists. People who are already studying the master’s degree can also complete this training. This is guaranteed by a so-called “education regulation”. For this purpose, the operator must present a procedure plan that allows students to complete the course “within a period that does not exceed the prescribed study period by one year”. Incidentally, the Bachelor of Medicine at the SFU has been re-accredited and can still be taken normally.
In principle, private universities or colleges must be regularly accredited or re-accredited after a certain period of time. Q Austria is responsible for both procedures. External reports form the basis for the decision.
AQ Austria managing director Petersen highlighted that the individual universities’ responsibility is “very high”: “We can impose conditions, we can withdraw accreditations. Ultimately, however, institutions are responsible for their quality.” The founding idea of this higher education sector was to create privately organized institutions where, for example, new forms of study and organizational law could be experienced. The state respected that and therefore kept the corresponding laws relatively lean, says Petersen.
There are differences in procedures between accreditations and re-accreditations: Petersen emphasized that newly founded companies would have to be evaluated in the course of an ex-ante review. “This is taking over what is planned.” A “leap of confidence” is also needed here, because not all the teachers are there yet. In the case of re-accreditation, on the other hand, it is already possible to assess what the university has done and whether the trust placed in it has been fulfilled – the same occurs with the admission and extension of courses.
(APA)