Oldenburg continuing education expert Prof Dr Anke Hanft has been elected as the highest quality manager in the Austrian higher education system.
She takes over as Chair of the Board of the Agency for Quality Assurance and Accreditation Austria (AQA.Austria). AQA.Austria was constituted at the end of January and is a merger of the three existing Austrian quality assurance agencies (AQA, Fachhochschulrat, Akkreditierungsrat). The agency will begin its work in March and is committed to the quality assurance of public universities, universities of applied sciences and private universities. In future, it will decide on the accreditation of new Austrian universities and degree programmes and review the quality management systems of existing universities.
The Board has a total of 14 members - including eight national and international academics - who are elected for five years.
Hanft was appointed to the professorship for further education at the University of Oldenburg in 2000. She is Director of the Centre for Lifelong Learning (C3L) at the University of Oldenburg and Scientific Director of the "Wolfgang Schulenberg Institute for Educational Research". Her research focus includes the areas of further education at universities, competence assessment of informally acquired knowledge and quality management in educational and knowledge institutions.
