Political commitment to higher education status
The year 2020 was a historic one for SFIVET from a policymaking standpoint: the Swiss Parliament unanimously approved the new SFUVET Act, which includes the basic legislative provisions on tasks, cooperation with cantons and professional organisations, participation, teaching certification and other qualifications, structure, personnel legislation, financing, federal supervision, penalties and the handling of personal data. The new Act is expected to come into force on 1 August 2021. When this happens, SFIVET will become the Swiss Federal University for Vocational Education and Training (SFUVET). Institutional accreditation should follow about a year later.
The road to this milestone was not any easy one: in early February 2020, the Science, Education and Culture Committee of the Council of States requested additional clarifications before it would consider the draft Act. This delay prompted the Swiss Accreditation Council to suspend its review of SFIVET's accreditation application and request that SFIVET resubmit the application after enactment of the new Act. SFIVET's project team used the time to press ahead with their work on the self-evaluation report. SFIVET's Executive Board approved the first three chapters, which deal with the vision and course offerings, as well as the quality assurance strategy.
Another important aspect of accreditation is student participation in decision-making processes. In order to make this possible, SFIVET created a new Student Council for Basic Training for the German-Speaking Region of Switzerland on 13 November 2020. In the future, student councils will represent the interests of students in their dealings with SFUVET. At the same time, a new cooperation ordinance will be drafted to formalise the participation of the staff assembly, the staff council and student council. The Fees Ordinance will also be revised on the basis of the new SFUVET Act. In the process, the fees for basic and continuing training courses will be standardised for all linguistic regions of Switzerland and in some cases adjusted to market prices.