SDU's New Institutional Accreditation 2021

What is institutional accreditation? 

To achieve institutional accreditation, SDU must demonstrate that our quality system meets externally established criteria for ensuring quality and relevance. These are statutory provisions and they are described in the accreditation Executive Order and are implemented in the guidance regarding institutional accreditation. 

In addition, we must demonstrate that our system meets a number of internally stipulated requirements regarding SDU’s work with educational quality. These are described in SDU’s quality policy.

The decision to award a new institutional accreditation was made by the Accreditation Council on the recommendation of an accreditation panel, which has assessed and evaluated SDU’s quality work.

How the evaluation was carried out:

How quality work is assessed in accreditation

• The evaluation of SDU’s quality work was carried out by an accreditation panel (appointed by the Danish Accreditation Institution) consisting of academic experts from universities in Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
• The evaluation is based on SDU’s institutional report (consisting of a system description and a self-evaluation of SDU’s quality work), two visits to SDU, where the panel entered into dialogues with selected students, lecturers, elected members of study boards, study coordinators, heads of studies, pedagogical consultants, heads of departments, vice deans, deans and the rectorate.
• The evaluation has also been based on submitted documentation (e.g. minutes, extracts from an education report, teaching evaluations), especially up to the second panel visit, where three audit trails were held. An audit trail is a selected issue such as how to ensure students’ contact with the research environment.
• The panel’s assessment is described in the accreditation report which was sent to the Accreditation Council before the Council meeting and has formed the basis for the decision.

High praise from the Accreditation Council

The Accreditation Council praised SDU’s work since 2014, when the university was accredited for the first time.   

- SDU has spent the time that has passed since its first positive institutional accreditation well. Their quality assurance efforts appear more mature the second time around, and based on their ongoing experience, SDU reflects on how to develop its system as well as simplify it. SDU continues to systematically address quality challenges, right down to the individual programmes offered, and just like the first time around, the problems are addressed – now with even greater clarity in relation to responsibilities, initiatives, deadlines and assessment of whether the initiatives have worked, says Accreditation Council chairman Per B. Christensen.

Would you like to know more?

Follow the links on this page and learn more about SDU’s work on educational quality. You might want to start with the video below, which gives a quick introduction to education quality at SDU.