Institutional Accreditation

Institutional accreditation of centres is established as an alternative to the model of accreditation of official university degrees. The procedure to be followed is regulated in recently approved Royal Decree 640/2021 of 27 July, of creation, recognition, authorization and accreditation of universities and university centres and therefore the activity will be carried out in accordance with Spanish legislation.

In order to obtain institutional accreditation, universities must meet the following requirements:

1. The initial accreditation of at least half of the official Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD degrees that they offer must have been renewed, in accordance with the general procedure laid down in Royal Decree 822/2021 of 28 September, which establishes the organization of official university education.
2. The implementation of its internal quality assurance system, aimed at the continuous improvement of the training offered to students must be certified, in accordance with the provisions of Royal Decree 822/2021, of 28 September, and in accordance with the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG).

The renewal of the accreditation of institutions, or institutional re-accreditation, shall take place within five years from the date of obtaining the first or subsequent accreditation decision of the Council of Universities. The procedure for the evaluation of institutional re-accreditation shall go with a report from a panel of external experts that must be independent from the institution seeking accreditation.

AVAP would issue a binding evaluation report to the Council of Universities, which, if appropriate, issues the accreditation resolution that would be sent to the university, the Autonomous Community and the Ministry responsible for higher education for the purpose of registering the accredited centres in the Register of Universities, Centres and Degrees.

This activity focuses specifically on checking the effectiveness of the universities’ Internal Quality Assurance Systems and their correlation with the standards set out in Part 1 of the ESG.

AVAP is currently unable to carry out this activity as current legislation states that the university shall apply for institutional accreditation of its centres to ANECA, or to the external evaluation body of the autonomous community in whose territory the university is established and which are registered in the European Quality Assurance Register (EQAR). If successfully listed in the EQAR registry AVAP would be able to carry out this activity.

On 3 March 2022, the Resolution of the Secretary General for Universities was published, by which instructions were issued on the procedure for the institutional accreditation of public and private university centres, and publishes the Protocol for the certification of internal quality assurance systems for university centres and the Protocol for the assessment procedure for the renewal of institutional accreditation of university centres, approved by the General Conference on University Policy. Download the PDF of the BOE-A-2022-3710.