The institutional accreditation procedure inspects the internal quality assurance system in a Higher Education Institution.
Since the introduction of the HEdA, institutional accreditation has been a requirement for the right to use a specific designation in Switzerland – institutional accreditation is therefore mandatory for any institution wishing to call itself a “University”, “University of Applied Sciences” or “University of Teacher Education”.
First institutional accreditation
The EPFL Direction set up a Steering Committee in 2018 to oversee the accreditation process at our School and commissioned the Swiss Agency of Accreditation and Quality Assurance (AAQ) to coordinate the various tasks required.
During the self-assessment step, which lasted two years, EPFL reviewed all our organizational processes and developed standardized files to formally document each one.
These reviewers’ comments were incorporated, and the report was presented to the EPFL Assembly for consultation on June 21st, 2021. The final version of the report was sent to the AAQ on September 3rd, 2020.
The AAQ’s experts read the report carefully and interviewed members of the EPFL community: Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD students, faculty members, scientific and technical staff, school and college deans, Steering Committee members and the EPFL Direction.
The experts spotted weaknesses in how EPFL communicates to members of its community on its quality assurance efforts. They therefore recommended to the Swiss Accreditation Council that EPFL be accredited conditionally, with this shortcoming to be remedied within the next two years. The Council followed the AAQ’s recommendation.
In 2024, EPFL fulfilled this condition and is fully accredited until June 2029.
In 2020, EPFL has published a video informing about the procedure and its challenges.
Previous audits
Previous self-assessment reports were peer-reviewed. The audit results are available here.
Updated on January 8th, 2025, Ewa Mariéthoz