Quality Management at the mdw

mdw's Quality Management System 

The Rectorate team that began its work in autumn 2015 set out to bundle the multitude of effective quality assurance processes that had existed for many years at the mdw in order to create a quality management system appropriate to the institution. In this way, the mdw has done and continues to do justice in a systematic manner to the responsibility that it bears as an autonomous university to deliver quality while simultaneously laying the cornerstone for its future success.

The following circular flow model portrays the system upon which the mdw’s quality assurance measures are based:

Qualitaetsmanagement

The basis for the mdw's quality management system is provided by the strategic goals for the entire university set by the Rectorate in 2016 and adapted in 2024:

  • Striving for quality and superlative achievements in all disciplines as the basis for the mdw's profile and future development
     
  • Creation of the best possible conditions for students' individual development
     
  • Extended integration of digital developments in central areas of the university and interfaces
     
  • Further development of the location in the context of the Viennese cultural and academic landscape as well as in the European and global contexts
     
  • Strengthening of the mdw as a place of responsible discourse on culture, social themes, and educational policy
     
  • Nurturing and utilising the potential of all employees in the best possible manner
     
  • Efficient and responsible management of resources

These strategic goals will be successively implemented in the mdw's various areas of activity – the core areas of studies and teaching, the development and exploration of the arts, academic and artistic research, and the cross-cutting areas of personnel, administration, and internationalisation – and shall guide the activities of all employees.

Important for quality management at the mdw is the fact that the highest standards of quality are an integral component of the artistic work, scholarly research, and artistic research done by mdw instructors and students day-in and day-out. By virtue of their constant efforts to achieve quality results, these individuals thus make a highly significant contribution to the further development of the mdw. The instructors' and teachers' quality assurance efforts, in the form of constant evaluation and improvement of the quality of their results, is thus inherent to the mdw’s institutional quality management in the core areas of studies and teaching, development and exploration of the arts, and artistic and scholarly research.

In order to achieve the desired results, high-quality processes in both core and cross-cutting areas are essential.

The mdw's culture of communication, which involves the most varied relevant groups, is well established across all of the university's various levels and assures that the issue of quality is constantly in focus. Mutual analysis and reflection serves to initiate changes that make possible quality's further improvement.

Audit

Austria’s University Quality Assurance Act (HS-QSG) stipulates that the quality management systems of all Austrian universities must be certified regularly in the form of a “quality audit”.

Following the conclusion of an altogether two-year auditing process, the accreditation commission of the evaluation agency Evaluationsagentur Baden-Württemberg (evalag) certified the mdw’s quality management system with no additional requirements imposed. This certification is valid until 30 September 2026.

evalag’s report on its findings along with its decision can be found here.