The ACPUA's Evaluation, Certification and Accreditation Commission approved the new protocol for the Renewal of the Institutional Accreditation of SUA centres at its meeting on 10 July (see documents).
The institutional accreditation of the centres (initial institutional accreditation), as declared in Royal Decree 640/2021, of 27 July, on the creation, recognition and authorisation of universities and university centres, and institutional accreditation of university centres, is obtained once the centre has an Internal Quality Assurance System (hereinafter IQAS) whose implementation has been certified by a quality agency and half of the degrees that make up the teaching offer of the centre (degree, master's and/or doctorate) have successfully passed the evaluation for the renewal of the accreditation. By fulfilling these two conditions, the centre demonstrates that it has the capacity to ensure the quality and improvement of its teaching offer based on the information provided by its IQAS.
The renewal of institutional accreditation is carried out 6 years after the initial institutional accreditation and aims to assess the centre's capacity to ensure the management and continuous improvement of its educational offer based on its strategic planning. As a key element of the centre's management, the IQAS must be kept up to date in order to provide the necessary information for reflection, to act in the face of difficulties and to improve the educational offer, in short, to support the decision-making process of the centre's management team. Therefore, the renewal of the centre's institutional accreditation will endorse the quality of the centre's educational offer, constituting the most relevant external evaluation process for higher education centres in our system.
In the second half of the year, the first two SUA centres to renew their institutional accreditation, the School of Engineering and Architecture and the Higher Polytechnic School, will undergo this process.
