Federal Act
on Funding and Coordination of the Swiss
(Higher Education Act, HEdA)

As part of its co­oper­a­tion activ­it­ies with­in the high­er edu­ca­tion sec­tor, the Con­fed­er­a­tion shall pur­sue the fol­low­ing ob­ject­ives in par­tic­u­lar:

a.

es­tab­lish­ing gen­er­al con­di­tions that fa­vour high-qual­ity teach­ing and re­search;

b.

fos­ter­ing a high­er edu­ca­tion sec­tor com­prised of dif­fer­ent but equi­val­ent types of high­er edu­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions;

c.

work­ing to raise the pro­file of high­er edu­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions and en­cour­age com­pet­i­tion, par­tic­u­larly with re­gards to re­search;

d.

craft­ing a co­her­ent Swiss high­er edu­ca­tion policy that is aligned with the fed­er­al policy to en­cour­age re­search and in­nov­a­tion;

e.

achiev­ing per­meab­il­ity and mo­bil­ity between high­er edu­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions;

f.

cre­at­ing uni­form study struc­tures, study levels and trans­itions and en­sur­ing mu­tu­al re­cog­ni­tion of qual­i­fic­a­tions;

g.

provid­ing fund­ing to high­er edu­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions on the basis of uni­form and per­form­ance-based prin­ciples;

h.

en­sur­ing co­ordin­a­tion of the en­tire Swiss high­er edu­ca­tion sec­tor and al­loc­at­ing tasks in par­tic­u­larly costly areas;

i.

avoid­ing com­pet­it­ive dis­tor­tions between high­er edu­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions and pro­fes­sion­al edu­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions with re­gard to the pro­vi­sion of ser­vices and con­tinu­ing edu­ca­tion and train­ing courses.