Degree Program Accreditation

Understanding degree program accreditation is important to the educational and career choices you make. Accreditation ensures that learners get good quality education from their selected program or university. Likewise it means that when you are ready to seek employment, you credentials and qualifications are recognized. It is important to locate schools that are accredited, otherwise getting a degree from an accredited program means that you would have wasted your time and money.

Accrediting bodies are tasked with:

1. Developing and employing standards to ensure learners get a good education.
2. Ensuring that colleges and universities use those standards to maintain and/or improve the quality of education they offer.
3. Making the colleges and universities accountable to their learner
4. Making the public confident that the overall education system is preparing learners with the required skills.

Accreditation is provided by agencies and bodies that are often private and nongovernmental. Their role is to programs and institutions. In turn these agencies report to departments or ministries of education. Some thing accrediting bodies look for are quality of instructors and their qualifications, the school's recruiting practices, admissions procedures, course content and quality, equal opportunity employment and admission, etc.

Why should you care about accreditation?

So, remember that enrolling in an accredited program or institution will affect at least three important things:

1. Qualification for federal or state financial aid
2. Transferring credit to another institution, or advancing to another degree
3. You want to be fully qualified and credible to your employer

Understanding the importance of degree program accreditation helps you avoid falling for those that are not validated. Diploma mills can cost you! So before you enroll, or have doubts. Do the following:

Be sure the program is accredited by a legitimate accrediting body. Don't fall into the diploma mill trap. Also check with licensing boards and professional associations under which they claim to offer programs.

• Be sure is it accredited by a real accrediting body.
• Many diploma mills will claim to be accredited by a fake body so watch out for those too.
• Check with licensing boards and professional associations under which they claim to offer programs.

As mentioned, it is difficult to keep up with a comprehensive list of all unaccredited program. The Oregon Student Assistance Commission web site provides further information on accreditation and for spotting diploma mills and a list of United States accredited institutions. It lets you do a search for universities and accrediting bodies. Wikipedia also has a listing of of unrecognized accreditation associations of higher learning and list of those that are recognized. As noted, these are ever changing, so always check before you proceed.