Continuously developing degree programmes, maintaining quality standards and achieving qualification goals - ensuring all of this as a university and reviewing it independently is at the heart of system accreditation. The University of Oldenburg has now received the seal of the Accreditation Council for its system, which serves to ensure and develop quality in study programmes and teaching, without any conditions. This is associated with the right to award the seal itself for the degree programmes it has audited.

The four C3L Master's degree programmes have successfully undergone the university's own procedure for the first time and have been reaccredited until 30 September 2031. By resolution of the Presidential Board on 10 October 2023, the degree programmes were awarded the University of Oldenburg's Quality Seal for Teaching and Learning. Internal and external students, external academic experts, representatives of professional practice and graduates were involved in the process. The four Master's degree programmes scored particularly well in terms of the subject-related content criteria.

Previously, the university's degree programmes were audited and accredited by agencies as part of the so-called programme accreditation process. At the end of 2018, the university decided to apply for system accreditation in order to ensure the quality of the degree programmes on its own responsibility instead. In recent years, the University has developed the new quality management system required for this in a university-wide process involving teaching staff, students and employees from all Schools, the Centre for Lifelong Learning (C3L), the Centre for Teacher Education as well as employees from the Departments, Divisions, the Staff Council and the Chief Gender Equality Officer.

System accreditation has the advantage that the focus is not only on the retrospective assessment of the quality achieved, but also on the continuous further development of the degree programmes. A central element of this is the annual degree programme conferences. These are based on surveys of students and graduates as well as data from academic controlling. Degree programmes are examined from different perspectives in terms of subject-specific, didactic, curricular and structural criteria: In the conferences, re-registering students, teaching staff and students alike incorporate their re-registration into goals and measures for quality development.

The university-wide seal for system accreditation must be renewed by the Accreditation Council after eight years. With this seal of quality, the University of Oldenburg joins the ranks of renowned and system-accredited German universities. According to the Accreditation Council foundation's database, there are 130 system-accredited educational institutions in Germany, 53 of which are universities and 67 of which are universities of applied sciences.