The "Act on the Quality Assurance in Higher Education and Science" (Official Gazette 151/2022) entered into force in January 2023. The new Act introduces a centralised procedure of accreditation of new study programmes by the Agency for Science and Higher Education based on uniform criteria for both public and private higher education institutions as opposed to previous legislation whereby public universities had the authority to accredit the study programme internally.

A new requirement in the initial accreditation of a study programme is the opinion of the Croatian Employment Service on the compatibility of the new study programme with the labour market needs and the alignment with the standards of qualifications listed in the Croatian Registry of Qualifications. In order to improve the national database system of  higher education and enable a centralized enrolment system, the scope of the Central Applications’ Office at the Agency for Science and Higher Education has been expanded to include all public and private higher education institutions in the enrolment process for all level of education.

The Act also prescribes that a joint study of a Croatian higher education institution and a foreign higher education institution should be accredited by an EQAR-registered agency selected by the HEIs. The aforementioned accreditation will be conducted by directly applying the European Approach for Quality Assurance of Joint Programme. Another novelty is that requests for external quality assurance shall be submitted directly to the Agency and not to the Ministry, which means that the final decision on accreditation is given by the Agency.

Source: Eurydice Unit Croatia