Using accreditation information to help with your educational choices.

By Greg Kennerson

While you were researching colleges or other educational options, you may have come across the phrase "Accredited by..." on a school's website or in other informational material.

You also may have seen the names of accrediting groups like the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education or the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. But who are these organizations? How do you know you can trust them?

In short, what does "Accredited by..." really mean?

Let's start at the beginning.

What Is Accreditation?

Accreditation is a tool of quality control used by the higher education system to monitor colleges, universities, and other educational institutions to ensure the quality of the education they provide. The accreditation process includes a self-analysis by the institution of its own standards (based on guidelines provided by the accrediting agency), a peer review, and a visit to the campus by personnel from the accrediting agency.

After the accrediting agency gathers all its information, a decision is made about the school's status. A school may appeal the decision if it disagrees with the outcome. Once a school is accredited, the school continues to be reviewed periodically.

Find accredited schools in your area.

What Does Accreditation Tell Me About A School?

An accrediting agency looks at a school's mission - a statement of what the school seeks to teach its students and its philosophy - and evaluates the school's facilities, faculty, and resources to determine if the school is qualified to fulfill its mission.

Accrediting agencies also take into account what they call "student outcomes." What is the graduation rate at the school? What do the school's students do when they graduate? Do they get jobs or go on to other higher academic programs? All these factors play into an accrediting agency's judgment of a school.

Knowing the accreditation status of a school can tell you something about the school's character. The granting of accreditation also tells you something about a school's financial status, for it is imperative that a school be financially sound to provide the education that its mission statement implies. (You wouldn't want to be paying tuition to a school that is going to go bankrupt, would you?)

Any school you are interested in should gladly provide you with its accreditation information. Remember: It takes a large amount of time and resources for a school to secure accreditation, and the school should be happy to provide information about it to you.

Find accredited online schools now.

More Benefits of Accreditation

Another reason for accreditation is to facilitate the transfer of credits between schools. This is an especially important consideration for students who may begin their studies at one school and wish to move to another. Two accredited schools are more likely to accept transfer credits from each other.

However, just because both institutions involved are accredited does not mean that you will automatically be able to transfer credits. That decision is still at the discretion of the schools involved and may involve other factors such as your GPA or duration and content of the coursework.

Accreditation also serves another larger purpose: to engender confidence in the business community and the public at large in the higher education institutions that educate and train students. When someone looking for a job says, "I graduated from..." it has to mean something to the business community. Accreditation is a way of building public confidence that graduating students have studied at reputable institutions.

Search our database for accredited schools near you.

Accrediting the Accreditors

Two groups "accredit the accreditors": the U.S. Department of Education and the Council of Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), a private non-profit organization. When an accrediting organization meets the standards of one or both of these agencies it is said that the organization is "recognized." Many accrediting agencies are recognized by both the Department of Education and CHEA.

Accreditation and Financial Aid

Both the Department of Education and CHEA are reliable auditors of accrediting agencies. However, only schools that have been accredited by an agency recognized by the Department of Education are eligible to receive federal financial assistance for their students. This is an important point to consider when evaluating a school's accreditation status.

The Scope of Accreditation

Some accrediting agencies focus on entire institutions while others focus on individual academic programs such as business or nursing. As of 2005, 6,814 institutions were accredited by organizations recognized either by CHEA or by the Department of Education. Some 18,152 individual academic programs were accredited.

To find out if a school is accredited and by which accrediting agency, you can use either of these databases: http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/ or http://www.chea.org/search/.

If you receive information directly from a school about its accreditation status, it is a good idea to make sure that the accrediting agency is recognized by either the Department of Education or CHEA. For a full list of recognized accreditors, click here.

Diploma Mills

Accreditation also serves to protect the public from educational fraud and unscrupulous organizations, so called "diploma mills." Diploma mills grant degrees and diplomas without the necessary academic work or without the standards required of accredited schools. Sometimes degrees can be purchased outright with no coursework at all. Of course, this is illegal and constitutes fraud. Students need to be wary of schools promising degrees in an unusually short time (Could you really earn a degree in a matter of days?) or offering to provide a degree simply for a payment.

With the growth of the Internet, it has become easier for a diploma mill to pose as a legitimate educational provider. Some estimates of the size of the diploma mill business put it at over $500 million a year. Employers and states have become increasingly vigilant about job-seekers or others attempting to use fake credentials. In Oregon and New Jersey, it is a crime to use a degree from a diploma mill.

Accreditation and Online Education

One new aspect of the accreditation system in recent years has been the rise of distance learning and online education. Often online programs and classes are structured differently than conventional, classroom curricula. To adapt to these changing circumstances, accrediting agencies have developed new criteria for judging online schools. Notably, accrediting agencies evaluate the amount of contact students will have with faculty members in an online learning context and the institution's resources devoted to online learning delivery.

Accreditation: Is it a Must?

If a school is not accredited, is it necessarily unreliable and dishonest? No. Some unique institutions with original learning approaches might not meet the standards of accrediting agencies. Some schools may simply have not completed the accreditation process. If a school you are interested in is not accredited, it should have some other means of independent quality assurance, and, again, the school should be happy to provide you with this information.

In short, accreditation should definitely be a part of your research on your educational options. It is a key piece of information you can use to evaluate a school's quality and how the school will help you meet your educational goals.