Once you’ve decided to pursue a distance degree, the most important thing you can do to ensure the program’s quality and credibility is to research its accreditation. If a school is accredited, that means it and its programs have been evaluated and approved by a council that checks standards of overall educational excellence. eLearners.com explains that accrediting councils usually “assess: he institution’s mission, goals and objectives, resources and resource allocation, student admission requirements, student support services and the quality of the faculty and educational offerings.” Not all distance degree schools are required to be accredited, so it’s important that you research the school’s status yourself. A non-accredited institution may have sub-par educational resources, untrained faculty members, little or no student and tech services, and little or no credibility in the greater educational and professional communities. If you decide to pursue a program from a non-accredited institution, you’re taking the risk that your degree will be utterly worthless.
Accredited schools and programs are usually able to accept and provide credit transfers, making it easier for nontraditional students to gain credit for courses they took years before, and to use their distance degree as a stepping stone for advanced study in the future. Accredited programs also provide higher quality education, which directly influences an employer or future school’s opinion of your skills and experiences, and helps a student prepare for a new job.
The Distance Learning College Guide also points out that accreditation protects online learners by assuring that they can access “the same rights to admissions, orientation, registration, counseling, tutoring, placement, financial aid and other student services that are available to all other students regardless of the delivery method of your classes.” Students needing federal grant money or federally-funded tuition assistance to enroll in online courses will also need to attend a school that is nationally recognized and therefore “eligible to participate in government student assistance programs,” according to the Distance Learning College Guide.
Researching a school’s accreditation status isn’t difficult. Many times, the school will have the accreditation information listed on the website, and you can research the organization directly by looking it up at the U.S. Department of Education website or on the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) site. It is just as important to research the accrediting council as it is the school’s accreditation status, because some institutions fake their status by using diploma mills, to grant degrees.
The six regional accrediting councils are the most common and generally one of the most respected groups of accreditation organizations. They include the Middle States Association, the Northwest Association of Schools & Colleges, the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. Another accrediting group, known as The Distance Education and Training Council (DETC) is nationally recognized and evaluates educational institutions that specialize in distance and online learning.
One other accreditation to look out for is specialized accreditation or licensure for a particular degree, especially professional degrees. Some of the programs that may need additional accreditation include teacher education programs, law licensing, certain accounting programs, engineering programs and certain business schools or departments. Check out this website for more information on department-specific accreditation.
