Central internal accreditation procedures will initially take place for each cluster once in the period up to the 2026/27 winter semester for a subsequent accreditation cycle of six years; in future, provided the system is reaccredited, the aim will be to extend the accreditation cycle to eight years.

The decision on internal accreditation will be taken by an ad hoc assessment committee of university members. Their role will be to produce an report based on the content assessment criteria and either to recommend accrediting a degree programme or accrediting with conditions, or refuse accreditation. Conditions may only be proposed if the assessment committee finds that the quality objectives of the content assessment criteria are not met; recommendations may also be made to the faculty in question. The results of the quality round tables and resultant measures, and the opinions of the external reviewers, current degree programme regulations and study programme reports can all feed in to this procedure. In addition, the assessment committee has the opportunity to obtain further information and complete its impression in discussions with students as well as teachers and/or those responsible for the degree programme, also, for example, insofar as individual content-related evaluation criteria were not discussed in depth in the decentralised procedure.

Student and Academic Services checks whether the formal accreditation criteria in the Lower Saxony study accreditation regulations are met and completes these details in the report.

An assessment committee generally consists of 5-7 people from the university, who are not permitted to work on a degree programme that is being assessed or in a relevant faculty (impartiality). When making up the assessment committee, a majority must be made up of people working in teaching, and the participation of students should be ensured with a share of not less than 40%; a majority of professors should be ensured. The Equal Opportunities Representative of the university is an advisory member of the assessment commitee.

Upcoming central evaluations should be advertised in an assessment pool for internal accreditation which is made up centrally to form assessment committees or where relevant appoint them. Nominations for inclusion in this pool can come from a university body, a faculty, or the student body. The assessment pool, including training of members, is overseen by Student and Academic Services.

The relevant faculty or faculties in the central assessment can respond to the assessment committee’s report. The Presidential Board’s decision on internal accreditation is final, however it will only differ from the recommendations of the assessment committee for important reasons (e.g. alignment of different lines of assessment).

Besides publication of the accreditation decisions and reports, the senate is also informed regularly about internal accreditation decisions.

In the event of a detrimental accreditation decision, the internal arbitration process provides an opportunity for the relevant faculty or faculties to object. If the Presidential Board does not accept the objection, an arbitration committee may be formed. The arbitration committee may recommend (a) upholding the accreditation decision, (b) that the accreditation decision is subjected to reassessment by another internal assessment committee or (c) in especially controversial cases, similarly to programme accreditation, forming an external assessment committee to assess the degree programme in question based on a self- assessment report from the relevant faculty or faculties. If repeated assessment comes to essentially the same result, repeated objection is not allowed. The Presidential Board may also take the steps allowed in the case of an objection in advance if the opinion of the relevant faculty or faculties about the report clearly shows dissent.