Qual­i­ty assur­ance means (QSM)

Pre­vi­ous­ly, stu­dents had to pay tuition fees of €500 per semes­ter. Since the sum­mer semes­ter of 2012, the fees have been waived. The abo­li­tion of tuition fees was tack­led for var­i­ous rea­sons. The fees were crit­i­cized as social­ly unjust, as they pri­mar­i­ly bur­dened those stu­dents who came from less finan­cial­ly sta­ble fam­i­lies. There were also crit­i­cal voic­es argu­ing that the fees were a restric­tion on access to education.

The abo­li­tion of tuition fees was decid­ed and imple­ment­ed by the gov­ern­ment of Baden-Würt­tem­berg at the time. It argued that edu­ca­tion was a fun­da­men­tal right and that every­one should have access to edu­ca­tion regard­less of their finan­cial sit­u­a­tion. The abo­li­tion was also intend­ed to show that the gov­ern­ment was will­ing to invest in the edu­ca­tion of its citizens.

How­ev­er, the uni­ver­si­ties use the tuition fees to be able to guar­an­tee a high qual­i­ty of stud­ies. To ensure that there are no loss­es here, Baden-Würt­tem­berg is the only fed­er­al state to com­pen­sate for the loss of rev­enue through the qual­i­ty assur­ance funds. This enables the gov­ern­ment to ensure that stud­ies at uni­ver­si­ties in Baden-Würt­tem­berg con­tin­ue to be of high qual­i­ty and offer stu­dents good prepa­ra­tion for their future careers.

Deci­sion and use of qual­i­ty assur­ance funds (QSM).

The qual­i­ty assur­ance funds are monies that the gov­ern­ment in Baden-Würt­tem­berg com­pen­sates for since tuition fees are no longer charged. The amount of these funds is 280 € per semes­ter and stu­dent. There­fore, these are not funds of the Gen­er­al Stu­dent Com­mit­tee (AStA). How­ev­er, the AStA has a “bind­ing right of pro­pos­al”. This means that 11.764 % of the funds are addi­tion­al­ly allo­cat­ed by the Rec­torate at the sug­ges­tion of the stu­dent body for ensur­ing the qual­i­ty of stud­ies and teaching.

The QSM may only be used for addi­tion­al mea­sures relat­ed to study and teach­ing. The mea­sures must ben­e­fit the stu­dents. A direct ref­er­ence to study­ing and teach­ing, which is also com­pre­hen­si­ble, is there­fore important.

Exam­ples include:

• Addi­tion­al teach­ing staff or cours­es (also divi­sion due to high num­ber of participants)
• Acqui­si­tion of learn­ing mate­ri­als and soft­ware to sup­ple­ment teaching
• Equip­ment laboratories
• Tuto­ri­als 
• adap­ta­tion to tech­ni­cal require­ments (replace­ment of old equip­ment used for teaching)
• Improv­ing the ser­vice in libraries

The appli­ca­tion for qual­i­ty assur­ance funds (QSM).

The qual­i­ty assur­ance funds are sub­ject to con­di­tions. In addi­tion to the con­di­tions, a process and time­line has been defined at Heil­bronn Uni­ver­si­ty to process the appli­ca­tions. The appli­ca­tions are processed by the bud­get offi­cer of the AStA accord­ing to the Admin­is­tra­tive reg­u­la­tions (VwV) is being worked on. Also involved in the process are the stu­dent rep­re­sen­ta­tive bod­ies and the cen­tral Qual­i­ty Assur­ance Resources Com­mit­tee (ZQA) and the dean’s office.